STATE HOKTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 125 



hand, deckiiisc vitli bright hues the fiekls, hill-sides and plains, 

 and lighting up with myriad tints the sombre depths of the forest. 



The world without flowers would be like night without a star, a 

 desert without an oasis, a life of toil without joy or hope. Have 

 flowers no other significance than to delight the outward senses by 

 exquisite colors, graceful forms and delicious fragrance? That sweet 

 songstress, Mary Howett asks : 



"Wlierefore were they made, 

 All dyed with rainbow light, 

 All fashioned with supremest grace V" 



And answers : 



" To minister delight to man, 

 To beautify tiie earth, 

 To comfort man, to whisper hope." 



The heathen philosopher, Plato, taught that beauty was an 

 idea emanating from the divine mind, and imaged in material forms. 

 Ere the pen of inspiration gave expression to divine love, this truth 

 was revealed in the book of nature. Who will say its pages are not 

 inspired? Flowers are expressions, in visible forms, of spiritual 

 beauties designed by the all-wise Creator to adorn our lives and 

 glorify our being. The contemplation of their delicate beauty leads 

 our minds up to him who fashioned them in the perfection of grace 

 and symmetry, breathed into them grateful odors, and tinged them 

 with all the brilliant hues of the sunset and the rainbow. 



Flowers teach us by '' sweet persuasive reasons," gently draw- 

 ing us, by suggestions of purity, innocence, refinement and love, 

 to a higher, better life. Apt and truthful are the lines of Horace 

 Smith in the " Hymn to the Flowers.'' 



" What numerous emblems of instructive duty 

 Your forms create. * * * * 

 Your voiceless lips, oh I llowers, are living preachers; 

 Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book." 



In this ]ioetic gem flowers are described as 



"Floral apostles, that in dewy splendor, 

 Weep without woe, and blush without a crime." 



Flowers are called stars of earth. As astrologers of old con- 

 sulted the stars of heaven in their divinations, so, from these day 

 stars of earth, may we read '' wondrous truths, and manifold as 

 wondrous.'' And like the radiant orbs that nightly move through 

 the firnniment on high, they proclaim their great Original. 



Flowers have their myths and legends, their history and poetry. 

 Holy writ abounds with floral symbols and illusti-ations. Solomon 

 in his songs illustrates mutual love of Christ and his church, by a 

 verse worthy of poetic numbers: ''For lo, the winter is passed; the 



