STATE HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 159 



out for pastures new, but there being no railroads in that part of the 

 country at that time, the party was forty years in going compara- 

 tively a short distance, but it made little difference, "as they lived off 

 the land they passed through, and their fare was the best the laud 

 could afford — they were served with quail on toast. And from this 

 time on we have written history touching the subject under consid- 

 eration, and we find by the record that this land — the Israelites went 

 up to possess it, the land of promise — was a goodly land, rich, fertile 

 and prosperous, the hills and mountains clothed with magnificent 

 forests, its valleys abounding in groves or olive and pomegranate, 

 and along the streams the vine flourished in wanton luxuriance. So 

 large, in fact, Avere the clusters of grapes that it required two men 

 to carry one bunch on a stick. Here under the benign and healing 

 influence of unnumbered millions of leaves we should expect strong, 

 vigorous and powerful tribes or nations, and it was so. There were 

 giants in those days in this land of Canaan, and their cities were so 

 strong and their defenders so valiant that the children of Israel, 

 fierce and blood-thirsty warriors, though they had got to be under 

 the leadership of Moses and Joshua, would not have been able to 

 take the land had not the Lord helped them. 



But this land flows with milk and honey no more, one man of 

 average strength is able to carry any bunch of grapes that grows in 

 all her borders. Giants in stature and intellect no longer tread 

 these hills and valleys, timely rains no more visit her once fertile 

 vales. Sterility and starvation sit in solemn silence on her bald and 

 barren hills,' many portions of the land are entirely deserted. Why 

 this great change? Simply because the leaves that were for the 

 healing of the nations were destroyed, as they were in Egypt, and 

 could not do their legitimate and necessary work. And the curse 

 that to-day rests upon the hills of Moab is due to the destruction of 

 the forest that once crowned them with grandeur and beauty. And 

 when we look through the circling ages and view from a horticul- 

 tural stand-point, by the light of the nine and twenty centuries 

 since Solomon built the temple, we are surprised and pained at the 

 wanton slaughter of those grand old monarchs of the forest — the 

 cedars of Lebanon — what sad havoc this army of thirty thousand 

 choppers must have made amongst those beautiful and useful trees. 

 Could Solomon in his wisdom have realized that the leaves of the 

 trees were for the healing of the nations, methinks he would have 

 built his house of brick, and preserved his forests and required the 

 planting of others, then this land of promise would have remained 

 a fertile and goodly land to the present day, and the Jews would not 

 be as they now are, sojourners in all lands. 



But the mistakes of our awaj^-back forefathers have at last in 

 modern times been productive of good; many nations and people are 

 awakening to the importance of this subject, Germany and France 

 have called a halt, and are doing something to regulate forestry and 



