STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 19 



In four cases the remedy suggests itself. In the fifth, the simple, 

 cheap, efficacious, infallible preventive is to shade the bole of the tree 

 during the hot portion of the day — say, to suit all localities, from eleven 

 nntil four. Tlie e<^g will not hatch without a high degree of sun heat. 

 The borer invariabl}' enters the side where the sun shines hottest during 

 the day. Set up a long shingle, a short board, a strip of bark, a piece 

 of cloth supported by two sticks, anything, the first of June the year 

 of the transplanting, and let it stand till the season ends. It will benefit 

 the trees aside from the specific use which I am describing. 



Where there is a scarcity of water, evergreens should be thoroughly 

 shaded, tops and all, during the first season. 



With comparatively rare exceptions, the cutting out of the centres of 

 apple trees is a practice of very doubtful utilit^y. 



I beg to submit in this connection that a well organized microscopical 

 department, charged with the examination and description of the fungi 

 and insects which infest the garden, the orchard, and the field, would 

 prove a valuable auxiliary to the State Fair, considered as a means of 

 public instruction. Illustrated lectures in this department should con- 

 stitute a prominent feature among the annual exercises. 



Ladies: I modestly maintain that Jiorirulture should be added to the 

 domain of housewifery. Is her kitchen clean? do her roses bloom with 

 vigor? Is she punctual with dinner? are her tulips fine? How is her 

 dining-room? how are her dahlias? These ought to be kindred ques- 

 tions. Docs she crochet well? Does she understand the beautiful arts of 

 cross-fructification, budding, slip]:)ing, la^'cring, engrafting? Can she 

 produce from a blossom of the Oxheart and a blossom of the Mayduke a 

 new cherry unlike either parent, by delicately shearing away the stamens 

 of the one and the stigma of the other? Is she able with the touch of 

 her ros}' finger tips to crown a common black locust with a grand, glow- 

 ing top of rose acacia? No lady should be pronounced "fit to marry" 

 till she has achieved these refined and beautiful mysteries of the floral 

 creation. Is it enough that she can simper and make soup, dance and 

 darn, exercise herself in tattling a little, and tattling more than a little? 

 Is it enough to profess an extravagant admiration of the bouquet which 

 Cffisar Augustus Snooks presents her, while she knows absolutely nothing 

 about the flowers which compose it? Bat I grow unamiable. Be good 

 enough to reflect that it is not a hedge of brambles, but of roses, which 

 I desire to place between you and the consummation of the dearest wish 

 of your hearts. 



This, fellow citizens, is the annual gathering in which you assume to 

 represent that fundamental interest upon which the nation and the State 

 are erecting their proud prosperity. All other interests sustain toward 

 this a relation of subordinateness and dependence. Ail the benevolences, 

 all the commissions which illustrate this generation — the Sanitary Com- 

 mission, the State Relief Committees, the Christian Commission, so 

 superbly represented here, so eloquently pleaded for by all these devices, 

 by all these beaming faces, by all this cunning cheatery of imitation, by 

 the savory steam of the New England kitchen, by the flowers without 

 yon chaste temple, and the fairer flowers within — all these draw every 

 cordial, every sweet morsel of wholesome food, every substantial com- 

 fort, every raw onion, every ripe apple, every red cherry, every globose 

 gooscberr}^ from the fields of honest toil. 



The merely social consequences of your coming together, the clasp of 

 cordial greeting, the interi'usion of congenial feelings, the furbishing of 

 old friendships, and the cementing of new ones — these are but incidents 



