382 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



Let me define the word agriculture. It has to deal with every- 

 thing the earth produces: husbandry, stock raising and farming, 

 the dairy, poultry, bees, silk, and the cultivation of other fibers; 

 this is one of the two general discussions. Horticulture is the 

 other division, and as my good friend, the late and lamented Dr. 

 Pardu, once said, the butt end of agriculture; just as Brother 

 Minier, also well known in the horticulture of Illinois, once hap- 

 pily put it, "Horticulture is the fine art of agriculture, and flori- 

 culture the religion of horticulture." Horticulture therefore is 

 still more universal in its missions than is agriculture. It has to 

 deal with every tree of the forest, to train them into forms of 

 beauty as well as use. For did not Mahomet say, "He who plant- 

 eth a tree watereth the earth;" had not Zaraster, the Persian, and 

 Confucius, the Chinese, still earlier enunciated the same senti- 

 ment. 



Did not the great Humbolt within the last century write, 

 "Man first destroys and then again builds up forests." Horti- 

 culture has to do with all the fruits of the earth, with all vege- 

 tables, with all flowers, and last but not least, the very earth itself 

 in transforming barren tracts into things of beauty through land- 

 scape gardening. 



Looking at horticulture in its missions, in these lights, I am re- 

 minded of the lines where the poet Milton, in Paradise Lost, 

 makes Eve say : 



"0 flowers, which will in other climates never grow, 

 Who now will rear ye to the sun ? 

 From thee, from thee, how can I part ! " 



Yet we have this comfort. Inasmuch as every succeeding epoch 

 of the earth has been more perfect than the preceding, as each 

 recurring civilization has been superior to that past, so it has been 

 of the advances in material art in horticulture within the last 

 hundred years. 



What may not the mission of horticulture climb to in the years 

 not far distant. The art has already been separated into separate 

 divisions of industry. Nothing in its history has so helped good 

 work as this. Let us hope that the near future will see it so 

 rounded out in its entirety, each working out its own separate end 

 and all assisting each other, that the next fifty years may see it 

 the most complete, as it is the most fascinating, to which the 

 mind of man can be turned. 



The men and women of Illinois, within the last 50 years, have 

 raised the profession to a high plane. All honor to such men who 

 have gone before us as Father Shepherd, Judge Brown and Dr. 

 Hull, who have died in later years, and to those of the old guard who 

 are still with us. May they still be spared many years in the good 

 work to which they have devoted their lives . Our good friend , Sam- 

 uel Edwards, has devoted his life to one of the missions of horti- 

 culture, beautifying the prairie with trees. Mr. Petigrew, whose 



