CoRNKLi. University, Ithaca, N. Y., Feb. 22, 1897. 



HONORABI.E: COMMISSIONKR OF AgRICUI^TURE, Ai^BANY. 



Sir : — When I came to New York, now several years ago, I 

 was interested in the dahlias which are to be seen in so many of 

 the farm-yards. To me, coming from a newer country, the dahlia 

 was mostly a thing of the books. At least, I had no personal 

 interest in it, for wherever I had seen the plant growing, it had 

 been planted in a merely incidental way as a part of some confused 

 and impersonal garden. But in the country districts of New 

 York it clings to the old yards like a memory ; and I knew that 

 here the plant is a survival of the dahlia passion which overspread 

 the country a generation and more ago. If the people loved this 

 old flower so much as to cherish it in all these years of its unpop- 

 ularity and neglect, I thought that we ought to improve it and 

 refine it and let them grow it to their heart's content. So I have 

 looked forward to the time when I might give a summer to it, but 

 the summers are now too full to allow of such recreation. But an 

 opportunity finally offered. The new strains of dahlias began to 

 be advertized. Persons interested in the cultivation of it offered to 

 cooperate in furnishing tubers, and I found the man who could 

 catch the spirit of the experiment. I submit the result as a bul- 

 letin under Chapter 437 of the laws of 1896. 



Although Mr. Miller may not agree, I do not consider the 

 dahlia to be the chief merit of this bulletin. The best thing in it 

 is the personal point of view. Flower-loving is sentiment and 

 emotion, kindled with imagination. It depends vastly more upon 

 the person than it does upon the flower. Some persons would 

 like to love flowers but they do not know how ; and there are 

 others who think that they love them because they know their 

 names and how to grow them. But I suspect that no one ever 

 really loves a flower when he is conscious of an effort to love it. 

 When a person once places himself in full sympathy with nature 

 and learns the art of seeing everything at its best, he is in position 

 to reap the joy of a garden ; and it really does not matter so very 



