SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 239 



be beautified. Let us make it the most beautiful country in the 

 world, — there is nothing to prevent. We who have made it what it 

 is to-day have done our part, and we must soon leave it to the young 

 generation coming up to go on with the great work and complete it. 

 If I come back in a hundred years, I hope to see the work has been 

 well done and to see great improvement. 



INTERESTS IN HORTICULTURE. 

 BY JONATHAN PEKIAM^ CHICAGO. 



Speaking extemporaneously, he complimented the paper of Mr. 

 Sanders, just preceding him, as having presented the subjects most 

 exhaustively in relation to the status and the growth of horticulture 

 in the West. He was glad to say that Mr. Sanders had been con- 

 nected many years, editorially, in the garden and lawn of that good 

 old journal that for forty-nine years had been a constant visitor 

 to so many families over the country, and especially in the West. 

 He had not come with any written speech, and was glad he did not, 

 since Mr. Sanders had gone over some of the ground more carefully 

 than he could have done. In relation to needs in horticulture there 

 are many, "and they have been constantly growing in the western 

 field. The growth of horticultural necessities will 'necessarily grow 

 with the growth of the country. He saw a number of persons in 

 the assembly who could look back fifty years. Among these he saw 

 Father Minkler, who dated back in Illinois nearly fifty-seven years. 

 What changes since that time? when the red Indian roamed all over 

 the west. What changes since the speaker carae to Chicago fifty 

 years ago? when even Cook county was a wilderness of grass. 

 Among the needs of horticulture are school houses : they are neces- 

 sary to the progress of the art. The more school houses, the higher 

 the plane of horticultural art, and, in fact, all agriculture, — the 

 foundation of the prosperity of any nation. Interests in horticulture 

 have been gradually progressing since first the founder organized 

 the State Society, by which the Northern Fruit-Growers' Association 

 was merged therein. Among these, such men as the late Dr. E. S. 

 Hull, W. C. Flagg, Smiley Shepherd, the venerable Professor 

 Turner, Samuel Edwards and many other wheel-horses in horticul- 

 tural science and art, began, some of them, to make horticultural 

 history. So the interests in horticulture began to be diversified by 

 the acute minds in an early day, notwithstanding the assertions I 

 have seen lately, that horticultural taste was little known until 

 promulgated by eastern authority in the West within the last few 

 years. The art was practically and steadily growing, new methods 

 were being tried, and, when found good, adopted. The result is, 



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