SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 193 



accepted and unalterable fact that the products of the orchards, and 

 of the hillsides, and of the meadows, were to be had, as a rule, only 

 by going after them in the country, and either by personally collect- 

 ing them from the natural vines and shrubs, or securing the coveted 

 and appreciated articles through the libei'al donations of rural 

 friends. No one pretended to lay up a supply, for future use, of any 

 fresh fruits except apples, or possibly of a few pears in addition. 

 Drying was the only method known for preserving the perishable 

 kinds. The season for each was short in comparison with the pres- 

 ent — the earlier and later varieties having now greatly prolonged 

 the period of production. It was very seldom that any one thought, 

 in the years gone by, of fruits as food. They were appetizing deli- 

 cacies or health-giving addenda to the real nutrients, mainly grains 

 and meats constituting the daily and yearly furnishings of the table. 

 Children, and often those of full human stature, sought, with quick- 

 ened vision and nimble fingers, among the grass of meadows for the 

 crimson strawberry; and, 1 dare say, more than one now present still 

 feels a thrill of pleasurable emotion as memory carries him backward 

 to the mild, rosy Sunday afternoon in June, when, along with the 

 exquisite perfume and delicious taste of the red, wild berries, a softer 

 and sw^eeter something was found, causing hearts of flesh to quicken in 

 their throbbings, and pure lips to redden with something beside the 

 tinted juice of the ambrosial fruit. The wild strawberry has not lost 

 its unequaled flavor; but let us not despair if certain of our number 

 never get anything from the cultivated plantations half so delicious. 

 We ought to be charitable if "strawberries are nothing now in qual- 

 ity to what they used to be on the hillsides of New England." 



The gardeners and vineyardists were just now excepted as the 

 only professional horticulturists of earlier times. But the latter 

 dressed the vine and watched the purple coloring of the clustered 

 berries, as a business quite distinct from that of the producer of 

 edible fruits. Their crops went into the fermenting vats and wine 

 cellers. The vine-clad hills of Germany, France and Italy, and, still 

 earlier, those of Assyria and Palestine, ran red with the rich juice of 

 the grape, which, as a manufactured product, our State Society has 

 pronounced not horticultural. The old viticulturists need not, there- 

 fore, be taken as pioneer specialists in our avocation. We may have 

 learned many valuable lessons from them as observant and intelli- 

 gent cultivators, but the propagation and care of the vine in wine- 

 producing countries need not figure largely in the history of horti- 

 culture. 



Let us turn to the professional gardeners. No country never 

 had better natural and artificial conditions for the evolution of this 

 specialist than Great Britain. Blessed with a fertile soil, and fanned 

 by modifying and moderating breezes from the Gulf Stream, no spot 

 of earth excels this remarkable island in the variety of plants that 

 may be grown in the open air. Such possibilities were early appre- 

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