226 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



lawn, will develop beauty and profitable pleasure with each suc- 

 ceeding year. Let us not forget that the plats of flowers, few 

 though they may be, in our living room or beside a window, or in 

 the greenery in winter, may give us profitable pastime in their 

 elegant and variegated, or unique foliage or habit, and in the deli- 

 cate and pure breath of perfume we get, when all outside is locked 

 in frost, or buried in snow. We may plant groves and wind breaks, 

 where we have them not. They will give us cool fragrance in sum- 

 mer, and in the autumn gleam with their wonderful tints of 

 crimson, and purple, and gold. Costly monuments have been 

 erected to warriors, whose only glory was that of having caused the 

 death of thousands of their fellow men, in an eager thirst for 

 power. Obelisks have been reared to tyrants, who have founded 

 empires upon the blood and the wreck of the lives of their sub- 

 jects. Temples have been built to mammon, and the poor pride of 

 the founders have sought to perpetuate their names upon en- 

 graved tablets, contained therein. The man who has planted trees 

 and other beautiful objects about his homestead, unconsciously, 

 perhaps, is rearing the most enduring and noble tribute to his 

 memory of all, and with this added consolation: The weary way- 

 farer, resting beneath their shade, in the far future, perhaps, when 

 the bones of the planter have long since became as dust, will, as 

 unconsciously, bless those who have tended these trees. In their 

 tops the twittering birds will pour out peans, and the winds mur- 

 muring among their leaves, will whisper of the benefactor who 

 sleeps the sleep of the dead, or swelling with increasing volume, 

 bear aloft a jubilant anthem, which rising in the heavens, will 

 reach Deity himself. Monuments may crumble and fall; obelisks 

 may be thrown prone in the dust; famed temples may be given as 

 hiding places for serpents and bats and owls. A civilization may 

 decay, and become a thing of the past. 'Trees will grow, and wax 

 greater and greater, and rear their glorious heads toward heaven, 

 and perhaps some future poet, of some future civilization, may sing 

 of them, as our own poet Hempstead sang of the mammoth trees of 

 California: 



"They were green when in the rushes lay and moanei the Hebrew child, 

 They were growing when the granite of the pyramids was piled; 

 Green when Punic hosts at Cannae bound the victor's gory sheaves, 

 And the grim and mangled Romans lay around like autumn leaves; 



