TRANSACTIONS OF HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILL. 263 



grapes, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are concerned, 

 wanting only intelligent education as to varieties adapted to the climate, 

 and the same care in guarding against insect depredators as the intelli- 

 gent farmer must himself use to protect the crops of ordinary husbandry. 

 I will go farther. We may justly claim, I think, that we have accom- 

 plished this: We have created not only a taste for the planting of groves 

 and orchards, but we have demonstrated that it will pay every farmer 

 so to do, to the extent at least of supplying the wants of himself and 

 family. 



What, then, remains further to be done in the direction of horticul- 

 tural art? Ah ! we are but on the threshold of our good work. Hereto- 

 fore we have but been laying the foundation broad and deep. Let us 

 look for a moment at this art comprised in the simple word horticulture. 

 It is often considered to mean simply garden culture. It means, really, 

 what garden culture implies, in every sense, a nicer and most careful 

 culture, and nicer and most careful manipulation of every process con- 

 nected with working the soil. If taken in this sense, Shakspeare's idea 

 that it is "an art which doth mend nature" would be exact. And 

 Lindley's definition, that "Horticulture is that branch of knowledge 

 which relates to the cultivation, multiplication and amelioration of the 

 vegetable kingdom," seeming as it does to include all earth culture, 

 would not be far out oFthe way. At least, every farmer may take valu- 

 able lessons of the horticulturist in the preparation and application of 

 manure, in the careful and exact plowing of the soil, and in the as careful 

 and exact sowing of the seed and subsequent cultivation. Horticulture 

 has a useful-practical and a practical-scientific side. The mere husband- 

 man, the simple earth-worker, deals only with the useful-practical. He 

 who may be truly called an agriculturist — for this word alone deals with 

 all that pertains to earth culture in its various forms, to the breeding 

 and fattening of animals for use, and to the various arts connected with 

 horticulture — he, I repeat, who may truly accept the honorable title, 

 agriculturist, must not only have a wide knowledge of what pertains to 

 labor, but he must also be scientific as well. He must know why a thing 

 should be done — have a real knowledge of facts. This is truly all there 

 is to science. Now, the bringing together of why a thing is done natur- 

 ally leads to how to do it in the best manner, and the best way is always 

 the easiest. And this is the practical-scientific, and constitutes a man a 

 husbandman, or stock-breeder in agriculture, or an orchardist, a vine- 

 yard ist, a small-fruit grower, a vegetable gardener, a florist, a tree planter, 

 or a landscape gardener. The sum of the whole is agriculture. We have 

 professors of agriculture and professors of horticulture in plenty. Very 

 few indeed can truly write agriculturist after their names. 



Thus it will be seen that while agriculture includes horticulture, that 

 really we have the big end of the word. In answering the question what 

 further remains for us to do, we say : In the first place we must keep up 

 the enthusiasm in all that pertains to orcharding and tree planting, and 

 we may now very properly seek to foster and extend garden culture, in 

 the growing of vegetables, in a systematic manner, with as great a 



