31>2 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



bay-window could be heated in the manner I have suggested, so that the 

 temperature would never fall below 40°, and the cellar sprinkled once 

 a day to give a moist atmosphere, 1 think it would be found that it 

 requires no more skill to keep the choicest winter-blooming plants in a 

 healthy and vigorous condition than it now does to care for common 

 plants which only bloom by accident in the ordinary temperature of the 

 sitting-room. Besides, I am confident that it costs more to warm a room 

 with a bay-window by driving the heat from the stove into the cold 

 angles of the window, than it would to stock it with choice plants and 

 heat it by a stove in the cellar. A bay-window costs a ton of coal extra 

 every winter, if you keep a rose geranium in it, and, with the cellar, it 

 will cost to warm the sitting-room and window from one to two tons less. 

 But the most important fact is, that the dry heat from the sitting-room 

 stove renders it almost impossible to keej) choice plants in a healthy 

 condition, while, with the cellar, you may cultivate any thing that is 

 raised in the green-house. 



The same principle could be applied to heating churches and school- 

 rooms, with equal advantage. 



HONORARY MEMBERS ELECTED. 



At the close of the reading of the essay, several persons were elected 

 honorary members of the Society. (See list of members.) 



PROF. THOMAS REQUESTS INFORMATION AND INSECTS. 



Prof. Thomas — I live in Carbondale, Illinois, and ask correspondence 

 from the members of this Society in reference to insects or their depre- 

 dations. I consider myself your servant, and will be glad to respond to 

 letters, and answer questions. You have a right to demand my services. 

 Please send samples of insects, with statements of circumstances in which 

 they were found. 



A brief discussion upon orchard culture ensued, without eliciting any 

 thing of special interest. 



The President remarked that in these discussions we are mutually 

 teachers and pupils, no one of us pretending to have attained perfection. 

 We have a climate which almost baffles our efforts ; our soils differ so 

 widely that the same treatment does not suit all localities, even those 

 adjacent differing much in composition and texture. Yet we are learning 

 every year; we know more of processes in horticulture this year than we 

 did last year, and I am confident the time will come — perhaps not in 

 my day — when good fruits will abound all over Northern Illinois. He 

 recounted facts in his experience as a nursery-man and fruit grower in 

 Northern Illinois since 1850, telling how the terrible experiences of the 



