130 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



AMONG FRUITS AND FLOWERS. 

 Prof. A. L. Lane, Good Will Farm, East Fairfield. 



Nature holds a wide place in memory and she holds that place 

 very tenaciously. Recall the scenes of your childhood, the 

 meadow, the brook, the deep-tangled wildwood, and every loved 

 spot that your infancy knew, and see how clearly and distinctly 

 they stand out before you in your vision. Literature abounds 

 in the same element; the literature of the Bible which begins 

 with the garden of Eden and ends with that beautiful city where 

 there are trees bearing fruit for the healing of the nations. 



My own childhood was fortunate in location. As a boy I 

 had the privilege of occupying a position just a few miles from 

 this city, ten miles from the leading city in the State, on the 

 outskirts of a country village by the side of a beautiful river — 

 Royal's river was a royal river to me and I well remember walk- 

 ing along its banks, especially one particular trip on an autumn 

 day when alone I walked up the banks of the river for nearly 

 three miles and back again on a delightful sunny afternoon, 

 finding hazel nuts and wild grapes and wild crab apples and a 

 variety of fruits along the bank of the river, and all the while 

 the most delightful autumn scenery that one could well imagine. 

 I remember with pleasure now as I look back upon it the hours 

 spent in my childhood in driving the cows to pasture, some mile 

 from home, across this beautiful stream and along a country 

 road until I came to the pasture where the boxberry plums were 

 ripe in the early spring and where blueberries and huckleberries 

 and raspberries and blackberries grew here and there in clumps 

 and where the work of my especial errand had other fruit 

 accompanying it than just the fruit of the work being done 

 itself. 



A little later it was my privilege to study botany with an 

 older sister who did the work in the text-book and permitted me 

 to do the work in the field, and the combination was so success- 

 ful that I received then an impulse toward the love of nature 

 and the study of nature in the open air that has not left me, and 

 nothing is more delightful to me today than a long tramp after 

 some special flower. Let me speak of just one taken recently. 



