SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 255 



V 



each other for the purpose of proper fertilization. The reviewer 

 pronounces strongly in favor of Mr. Longworth and the neces- 

 sity of planting fertilizers with special (pistillate) kinds. 



Without attempting to even summarize the progress that has 

 been made during the last half century in our country in hor- 

 ticultural science and art, it may be asserted that this progress 

 has been exceedingly great. During this time nearly all existing 

 societies and associations like our own have been formed; nearly 

 all horticultural business enterprises of which we know have 

 sprung into existence. Before this time no markets were 

 regularly supplied with horticultural products, and few families 

 thought of buying, except as rare luxuries, fruits for the table 

 or flowers for decorative purposes. The trade in perishable 

 fruits and garden producls to-ctay — this day — is greater than that 

 of the whole country during Washington's administration of 

 eight years. This statement is not based upon actual figures, 

 but is, nevertheless, readily believed. Marvelous advance has 

 been made both in the materials of tne art and in the popular 

 appreciation of its products. Ours is a day of intense horticul- 

 tural activity, such as never before was witnessed in any age or 

 country, if we judge by the number of men and women employed 

 and the total aggregate of sales made. I will not pronounce so 

 confidently upon having so much more love for and interest in 

 the work for its own sake, so much better and fuller recognition 

 of the beauties and charms connected therewith, than had our 

 fathers and mothers a generation ago, or even than had the an- 

 cients when architecture was young and when the trades of the 

 tailor and dress-maker were unknown. We certainly are not 

 devoid of a sense of the luscious savor of fruit nor of the sweet 

 fragrance of flowers. Happy they who confine profitable busi- 

 ness and a high taste for the pure and beautiful in the daily 

 association with trees, and vines, and herbs and flowers — 

 Nature's bounties and benedictions, art's treasures and triumphs. 



The interests and delights in horticulture being thus universal 

 with man in time and space, during all time and in every land, 

 the art being old as well as new, but new emphatically in the 

 extent of its practice, and especially in our country new in a 

 business way, with every indication of wide and great increase 

 in the amount of financial transactions connected therewith, 

 coupled with the rapidly increasing ability of our people to pay 

 for the gratification of taste and the indulgence in luxuries, and 

 above all the growing habit of all classes and grades of Ameri- 

 cans to make daily use of the products of the fruit plantations, 

 gardens and greenhouses, all serve to impress upon our minds 

 the unmeasured importance of experiments and investigations 

 tending to improve in every feasible way the practice and ma- 

 terials of the high-born art and new-born business. Progress in- 

 deed has been made in the past, but when we review the 



