1^0 3Iississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



were formerly engaged in marketing the natural products of the country 

 (some are doing so still) ; now it is necessary to plant in order to reap, to 

 breed and feed cattle in order to have meat. Farmers and horticulturists 

 are prosperous or the reverse, according as they think and experiment for 

 themselves, and so become familiar with facts they can rely upon and put in 

 practice. We live in an age of thought and action. Close comiietition, the 

 host of enemies that thwart our most cherished efforts, the failure of once 

 much valued varieties of fruits and flowers, demand that we sow intelligent 

 thought in the garden without stint. But these failures are perhaps in ac- 

 cord with the laws of universal nature, that nothing really good and beauti- 

 ful in the highest degree can be said to be permanent. The future of horti- 

 culture is involved in the present, and just in proportion as we are intelli- 

 gently informed, as to the laws underlying its joractice, so will our success be 

 measured. The want of the hour is facts, scientific facts, such as arc deduci- 

 ble from successful practice, and no other. The.se we can take hold of and in- 

 corporate into our work. And this brings me to observe that our power of 

 observation must first be awakened and stimulated before we can experiment 

 to anjr purpose. To merely observe, however, involves but little effort of the 

 mind, but to plan and carry out an experiment implies a pre-arrangement of 

 the conditions of an experiment, and, as might be inferred, precedes the for- 

 mer for scientific purposes. By observation, then, we note anomalies as they 

 occur in nature; but in putting a question to nature, we arrange our condi- 

 tions beforehand. 



But very few people appreciate the difficulty to be surmounted in the con- 

 duct of an experiment. On horticultural matters almost every one thinks 

 they have a special mission in that direction, and it is very generally the case 

 that those who know the least about it are the most anxious to ventilate 

 what they do know, and are too often reluctant to admit the possession of 

 knowledge in others. I apprehend that but few will difi'er with me when I 

 say that nature makes experimenters; that the most comprehensive knowl- 

 edge of nature, careful training and ample scientific and practical knowl- 

 edge will not make accurate ox])oriinonters of some people. No man, I firmly 

 believe, can be successful in this line of human eflbrt who is careless, slovenly 

 and loose as a practitioner. An experimenter shovdd be the oj^posite of this, 

 a careful, accurate and methodical thinker and worker. In fact a man of 

 "gumption" who can handle details. No person ever became a succe.ssful 

 horticulturist who could deal only in large results, and just here there is a 

 broad margin between the farmer and the gardener. The person who can 

 not condescend to little matters in the conduct of an experiment, is paving 

 the way for a failure. Wherever a large measure of success has been attained 

 in the practice of this profession, all tho.se who look beneath the surface will 

 see that the result is largely in the ability of the individual to measure de- 

 tails at their value. An experimenter should be a man who possesses suffi- 

 cient acquaintance with his profession as an art, supplemented by such a 

 wide range of general and scientific knowledge as will niala> his work as 



