242 TRANSACTIONS OP THE HOETICULTURAL 



soap. No wood, coal or peat for fuel, and I need scarcely say they 

 have no horticulture. They simply exist and are in a way happy and 

 contented just as an animal might be satisfied in a burrow. Their 

 wants are limited and their supplies are likewise limited. 



The Arab dwells on the hot sands of the Sahara. To-day he 

 reposes under a date palm by the Nile, and to-morrow he pauses in 

 his wanderings to rest himself in the shadow of a great rock in the 

 desert. All the laud is his, but never a home has he. He lives on 

 his dates and the milk of his camels, as Abraham may have done 

 thousands of years ago, aud as the descendants of this man may live in 

 the centuries to come. No agriculture, no mental, moral or spiritual 

 culture, and need I add, he has no horticulture. By the brackish 

 fountain the plants, the fruits and, the flowers may spring up spon- 

 taneously to charm his eye and please his palate. He may pluck and 

 enjoy, but he never cultivates nor improves on what nature has given 

 him. He may be to some extent a fruit-eater, but he is never a hor- 

 ticulturist. We have more numerous wants than either of the classes 

 I have referred to, and fortunately for us our supplies are more nu- 

 merous also. 



It may be said that many of our wants are artificial, and their grat- 

 ification not a necessity. From the standpoint of the untutored sav- 

 age, this may seem true. For what are books, pictures, poetry, music, 

 fair flowers or fine fruits to him? Perhaps meaniugless terms. But 

 with us it is not so. We have learned to take our pills with a coat- 

 ing of sugar. We eat from gaily-painted dishes with spoons and 

 forks, plated with nickel or silver; we have bouquets on the table 

 and bloom-plants in the windows — in short, we combine the agree- 

 able with the useful, and therefore we have, as a natural result, di- 

 versities of taste, diversities of enjoyment, and diversities of employ- 

 ment. Auiong the many industries that have sprung up, in answer 

 to the demands of our diversified wants, no one is more useful or 

 more agreeable than the cultivation of plants, fruits and flowers, 

 which we call horticulture. 



If the wild man is a crude and undeveloped being, inferior in 

 all the equalities which make the civilized man attractive or useful, 

 so is the wild flower a very inferior production when compared with 

 the cultivated varieties. 



It is true that wild flowers are not devoid of beauty, especially 

 M^hen growing in clusters in shady nooks or on sunny slopes 

 we individualize one, and scan it closely, we will be surprised to see 

 how little there is in it; how few the parts in the blossom; how com- 

 paratively faint and transient the hues, and how meagre the aspect. 



Take the wild rose as an example. The name sounds poetic, and 

 there seems a halo of romance about it; but the flower is really a 

 very insignificant thing. Pluck it, and how soon it falls away, leav- 

 in your hand only the stem and the seed-pod. The golden rod and 

 the silphium have little individual beauty, but their clusters of yellow 



