186 "Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



liberal fertilizing, judicious rotation, a careful keeping of his 

 stock, his tools, his accounts, and, perhaps, above all, his brains, 

 but the delightful stories of other men's success elseiohere, of fields 

 ordained by nature to give larger returns, of skies shedding more 

 timely rains, of temperatures more merciful in extremes, of lati- 

 tudes that produce as staples the fruits he occasionally delights in 

 as luxuries. Now the paradise is a Florida orange grove, now 

 a sheep range in Colorado, now a cattle ranche in Texas, now 

 a peach orchard in Delaware, and now an almond grove in Southern 

 California. 



Just one year ago, urged partly by the need of rest and recreation, 

 partly by a desire to realize a half practical, half (perhaps) poetical 

 dream of a horticultural paradise of my own, and doubtless, partly, 

 by the unreasoning nomadic instinct above referred to, I left Wis- 

 consin for a month's sojourn in what I had reason to believe was 

 one of the most inviting and sunniest regions of the " Sunny 

 South." It will be my aim to record in this paper the general re- 

 sults of my observations and reflectio.is there, for the benefit of 

 others who may be meditating a permanent change to a more 

 genial clime. A desire to be absolutely impartial in comparing and 

 measuring advantages, will, it is hoped, be manifest — a desire, per- 

 haps, now more easily realized, after the lapse of nearly a year 

 since my return. 



Leaving Madison on the crisp, bright morning of February 5th, 

 while the sun was thawing the frozen mud, snow being entirely 

 wanting, I soon ran into my first surprise — not laid down in the 

 books — the further south I went the colder and more disagreeable 

 became the climate. Near Chicago appeared snow banks. All 

 through Indiana, and half through Kentucky, snow lay everywhere 

 in patches. In Louisville, the second morning after my departure, 

 large heaps of muddy and frozen snow were everywhere piled up 

 at the curbstones. In the hotel, coal stoves appeared as indis- 

 pensable a3 in Madison or Milwaukee. In Nashville was found a 

 cold rain, with mud only approximately equaled here by State 

 street in its ugliest day. Five days are consumed in easy stages of 

 daylight travel, with half a day in Louisville, and two days in 

 Nashville. A raw Saturday night finds me at the objective point, 

 the little city of Marietta, in Northern Georgia, twenty miles north 

 of Atlanta, the capital. I am expected, and a bright coal fire in 



