SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 381 



Third. Large size sheller for factory use, about fourteen 

 bushels per hour. Price 2,000 francs, about $380. 



While these large machines would be practicable for canning 

 factories, the small size would be very well adapted for market 

 gardeners, who supply the local markets, and the medium size 

 for supplying the wholesale trade. Yet I would not advise any 

 one to purchase one with the expectations of realizing large 

 profits before it would be tested by some expert, society, or other- 

 wise. While they bid fair to become in general use they hare yet 

 room for improvements. Although there are many agricultural 

 experiment stations in the United States, we are in need of some 

 specially adapted for testing agricultural implements. 



France, whose agricultural implement interest is, perhaps, not 

 the hundredth part of ours, has one, and although but recently 

 established, is doing a grand work for its country. 



While at the Paris Exposition the horticultural display as a 

 whole was perhaps the greatest ever held, yetof all its fine garden 

 vegetables, choice fruits and exquisitely beautiful and fragrant 

 flowers, with a few rare exceptions, and aside from quantity and 

 neatness in arrangement I have seen nothing superior to what 

 we grow in the United States, and in 1892 we ought to see a 

 horticultural and forestry display at Chicago with renewed ex- 

 hibits and a rustic forestry pavillion superior to all that has pre- 

 viously existed. 



After the reading of the preceding papers the choir rendered 



some more good music, after which the President called on Jona- 

 than Periam for his address. 



THE MISSION OF HORTICULTURE. 



Mr. Periam, of the Prairie Farmer, Chicago, was called on 

 for his paper on "The Mission of Horticulture." Mr. Periam 

 coming forward spoke extemporaneously, apologizing for not 

 producing a paper, saying that he had of late years trusted so 

 much to stenographers that he had gotten out of the habit of writ- 

 ing. In this case he had not the privilege of selection. He had 

 found himself down on the program to answer to the subject. It 

 was too broad for a paper and of course could not be properly 

 discussed in a half hour's speech: he therefore would not attempt 

 to cover the subject, and of course might not keep strictly to the 

 specific subject, but would endeavor to do so correlatively. 



Some of the missions of horticulture are to introduce better 

 methods of art ; to grasp whatever science may give us from time 

 to time; to improve processes and cultivation, and as religion 

 carries the human family to higher and higher planes of life, so 

 does horticulture carry to higher and higher planes of excellence, 

 in thought and practical cultivation, now leading every depart- 

 ment of agriculture. 



