248 TBANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTUKAL 



leisure should develop the desire to render these homes beautiful, 

 aad that these farms of beauty should take shape in a bit of land- 

 scape work, a green lawn, ornamental trees, flowering shrubs,clam- 

 bering vines, and especially in the domain of the most lovely of 

 nature's treasures, blossoms, that not only gladden by their varied 

 forms, of beauty of coloring, and satisfying fragrance, but carry 

 along the certainty of fruit vouchsafed in the promise that seed 

 tiQie shall be followed by harvest. 



To go back to the times known only to us through the legends 

 which poets have written, we may find that all that is now consid- 

 ered beneficient was the work of the feiiiale principle in life, and not 

 that of the male. They were goddesses and not gods. It is related 

 that Exisichton, to bring derision upon Ceres, cut down her groves. 

 As a just penalty for this impiety, Ceres caused him to be consumed 

 with a continual hunger, and at length, when he had sacrificed all 

 his possessions to satisfy this appetite, he drowned himself. It is 

 simply a practical way to show that ancients understood that the 

 cutting away of forests caused the fields to lose their fertility. 



The deities of all ancient people in the dawn of civilization wor- 

 shipped in groves, and groves were held sacred. A nymph (Hama- 

 draya) was supposed to inhabit each tree, and she perished with it. 

 Even the mighty Eneas, when compelled to build his fleets from the 

 forests of Mount Ida, was obliged first to get the consent of the 

 Goddess Cybele, to whom they were dedicated. Now, who was 

 Cybele, or Rhea? The daughter of Cselus and Terra. Caelus, or 

 Uranus, signifies Heaven. In mythology he was the son of Ether 

 and Dies, and the predecessor on the throne of heaven of Saturn and 

 Jupiter. Terra was the goddess of the Roman mythology, in whose 

 form the earth was personified and worshipped, and who in the Hesi- 

 odic Theogeny, as Ysea, was the first-born of Chaos. Ceres, the god- 

 dess of grain and harvests, was a daughter of Saturn and Rhea, or 

 Cybele, for the Greeks and Romans both worshipped her; and her 

 sceptre was a bunch of corn, typifying the ripe fruits of the earth, 

 or a head of poppy, as signifying the blossom from which all fruits 

 spring. 



Thus we have ancient authority from which to quote the power 

 and influence and the importance of women in horticulture, the 

 most ancient of all authority, the authority of the Gods of Myth- 

 ology. Well may Bryant, the greatest of our emotional poets, have 

 written: "The groves were God's first temples," so sacred to that 

 horticulture of which trees form so important a part, and which we 

 have seen was directly given to us, the foster-mother being woman. 



But the first art practiced by man was horticulture, and its high 

 priestess was Eve. Well may she have lamented when driven from 

 Paradise to till the earth covered with thorns, briars and thistles. 



"Oh, flowers! that never will in other climates grow. 

 Who, now, shall rear ye to the sun. 

 From thee, from thee, how can I part?" 



