bOCIETY OF CENTKAL ILLINOIS. 243 



flowers add brightness to the autumnal landscape, and contrast finely 

 with the purple asters by the hedgeside. But when the human heart 

 yearns for flowers to aid in expressing its emotions, whether of joy 

 or grief; whether it be to reward the student, to adorn the bride, or 

 to express sorrow for the dead, we seek not the poor, expressionless 

 things by the wayside, but we select those of fairer bloom, of richer 

 hues, of more enduring form, developed by the care, the culture and 

 the skill of the modern horticulturist. 



We speak of wild fruits, and the old man's eyes brighten, till he 

 seems almost to fancy he is a boy again "upon his native heath." 

 He forgets that "distance lends enchantment to the view." The 

 strawberries in the old pasture were not half so sweet as they seem 

 to him now; really they were poor sour things he would scarcely 

 tolerate now. The huckleberries on the hillside were pretty, but 

 insipid, and he forgets there were rattlesnakes there too. The wild 

 plums were red, but hard and bitter, and certainly not at all good, 

 nor to be compared with the cultivated fruit. 



Take the apple, which may be almost styled the king of fruits. 

 The wild crab has a beautiful blossom, one of the fairest of all the 

 springtime, but that is the best part of it, for the fruit is hard and 

 utterly unpalatable. Even the traditional small boy, with his om- 

 niverous appetite, would scarcely hunger a second time for a bite of 

 wild crab-apple, for it is in its way an unmitigated and uncultivated 

 barbarian, while the Bellflower shows the effect of the scientific 

 culture of the modern horticulturist. 



But not only has the horticulturist made a- great improvement 

 on the imperfect models nature has given him, he has also utilized 

 some things that were not apparently designed for any particular 

 use. The Osage Orange, in its native home, is a tree in the forest, 

 but the man of science has transplanted it to our colder clime. He 

 has said to it, "Thus far shalt thou grow, and no farther," and in 

 its diminutive state he has compelled it to stand an armed sentinel, 

 ever on the alert to guard his enclosures from unwelcome intruders. 

 You have only to look about you in this prairie country to see how 

 beauty may be combined with utility even in the hedge-row, which 

 is a much more agreeable feature in the landscape than the unsightly 

 old-fashioned rail fence. 



Horticulture is also a great pecuniary advantage to the depend- 

 ent classes by furnishing them a reasonably remunerative employ- 

 ment adapted to their ability. Whatever tends to make these classes 

 in any degree independent and self-supporting, exerts a civilizing in- 

 fluence of no mean order. In a strictly agricultural district there is 

 little the women and children of the villages can do to contribute to 

 their own support outside of their own families. Farm-work is too 

 heavy and laborious for their strength, and even the men are now 

 throwing the burden of it on machinery of various kinds. But in 

 horticulture it is not so. Much of the labor is light and not dis- 



