TRANSACTIONS OF HORTICCTLTURAL SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILL. 



265 



summer shadows over a piece of nicely-kept grass, with handsome shrubs 

 nestling here and there, and the little parterre of flowers, however small 

 it may be. 



There is one other direction that this Society has been constant and 

 earnest in: Our record will show that we have earnestly endeavored to 

 inculcate the importance, nay necessity, that every farmer should have a 

 good vegetable garden. Herein we have not been able to keep the people 

 quite so near to our ideas as we have in that other department of horti- 

 culture — the orchard. 



But we must not therefore despair. Our own individual efforts, in 

 the cultivation of vegetable gardens, will tell as surely in the end as they 

 have in orcharding. In the cultivation of the vegetable garden, the 

 average farmer lacks two things : skill and will. The skill to know what 

 and how to plant and how to cultivate, and the will to do it well. He 

 dreads to spare a day from the corn-field, for the systematic cultivation 

 of the garden. He thinks it a waste of time to thoroughly prepare a 

 piece of land for vegetables, and consequently about twenty-four in 

 twenty-five confine their efforts to the raising of a few cabbage, turnips 

 and potatoes, when, if he did but know it, the labor intelligently spent 

 in properly cultivating a half acre of vegetables would repay twice told 

 the same amount of labor put in the corn-field. Here, I think, is an 

 important work that we may well prosecute with renewed vigor. It is for 

 us to show how easy it is to raise half the living of a family on a small 

 plat of ground, by planting in as straight rows and taking the weeds as 

 early as the first-class farmer does those in his corn-field. 



In all this we have and are laboring assiduously. We come together 

 and talk earnestly and intelligently. The newspaper press, and to their 

 honor be it said, especially the daily press, report our proceedings and 

 extract from our printed volumes copiously. The State appropriates 

 money sufficient for printing 1,000 volumes annually of the proceedings 

 of the State Society, of which ours forms a part. I think there should 

 be not less than 10,000 printed, so they could go freely among the read- 

 ing farmers, for I don't believe in helping those who will not read. Such, 

 like the Bourbons, never get out of old ruts, never learn anything. I 

 think we should most earnestly press this matter of extending our useful- 

 ness through our annual volumes. One thousand volumes is small, indeed, 

 for circulation among a population of 2,000,000 of people, all of whom 

 get their sustenance either directly or indirectly from the farm, the 

 orchard and garden, more than half this coming or should come from 

 the orchard and garden, horticulture being in fact, in all densely popu- 

 lated countries, the most important branch of agriculture. 



I have always believed that the true way to educate a people is to 

 multiply school-houses. I think it better that the masses be taught the 

 three primary branches of learning, rather than to let the many go uned- 

 ucated, while Governments spend vast sums of money in building great 

 universities to make masters of rhetoric. This universality of education is 

 what has made the North pre-eminent in the arts and sciences, in manu- 

 factures, commerce, and the great agricultural wealth that is yearly feeding 



