TRANSACTIONS OF HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILL. 315 



assure you that the rabbits will not touch them ; one application will be 

 sufficient for one winter. It is an excellent plan to wash the trunks of 

 your trees once a year with strong lye. 



Trtnifning. — If trees are carefully watched, to take out such branches 

 as are liable to cross each other, there will be but little trimming neces- 

 sary. S. G. MINKLER. 



REPORT UPON HOME ADORNMENT. 



Mr. B. O'Neil, of Elgin, presented the following report: 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Horticultural Society of Northern 

 Illinois : 



Once more we assernble together to exchange ideas and recount our 

 failures and successes of the past year, and to imprint our foot-marks on 

 the page of time, and thereby leave to our progeny the foundation for a 

 higher development. Time is fleeting and all the ingenuity of man can- 

 not bridle it. If we come together merely for the advancement of our 

 own interest, then our meeting is a failure ; for selfishness belongs to the 

 order of dog, and though the disciples of the evolution theory may try 

 to establish an affinity between bimana and the dog, still we can never 

 reconcile an affinity between the latter and the Deity. This Society 

 should have a higher object than the recounting our own experiences 

 among ourselves. We should endeavor to educate the public in the prin- 

 ciples we champion. We pride ourselves on the smartness and ingenuity 

 of the nineteenth century, but I think we have lost a great deal of the 

 common sense and patient industry of our forefathers. Our children 

 learn a smattering of botany in our schools, they learn all about pistils 

 and stamens, and rhizomes, and pollen, but I think it would be a great 

 deal more profitable to shoot some common sense into their heads, and 

 tell them the medicinal properties of clover, and May-apples and poke; 

 for what is the eclectic practice of medicine (thanks to Wooster Beach) 

 but a modification of our grandmothers' mode of doctoring? 



Gentlemen, you have aske(;^ me to talk of Window-gardening, and 

 while I stand by the window, arranging the different kinds of plants that 

 contribute so much to make the home look cheerful and joyous, ray mind 

 wanders into space, and through sympathy I find myself communing 

 spiritually with that class of hard and horny-handed sons of toil — our 

 farmers; and, soliloquizing, I exclaim, surely this is the widest field for 

 our missionary labors. We have spent so much time in fixing and deco- 

 rating the windows and the yards of our city friends that the farming 

 community commence to think they can never enjoy such a luxury until 

 they get rich enough to come and live in the city. Well, we cannot 

 blame farmers so much for this, because through the force of habit and 

 custom farm life is an eternal drudgery; it is the nearest approach to 

 prison life in this country. Is there anything in reality why it should be 

 so? I think not; for British farmers, with their high rentals, as a general 

 thing have pleasanter homes than American farmers; and if we step 



