22S ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



garden. If Mr. President devotes his farm to the growing of potatoes and turnips, apph.-s, 

 pears and peaches, he is an agriculturist. If I devote my garden plat to the same pur- 

 pose, I am a horticulturist. 



Yet custom has given a broader distinction, and has made the difference to consist 

 chiefly in the things cultivated — calling the production of the cereals and the grasses, 

 and the raising of the stock, agriculture ; and that of the fruits and vegetables, horticul- 

 ture. And this difference has been gradually widening. The owner and cultivator oi 

 the broad acres has come more and more to feel that he has no business with horticul- 

 ture in its limited sense; that his labors are on too grand a scale to permit of his devot- 

 ing any attention to the growth of fruits ; while he is ignorant even of the existence of 

 many of the most valuable and wholesome of the vegetables. If he can fill his barn and 

 his cribs with a large yield of the cereals and of hay, and his meat barrels with a gener- 

 ous supply of beef and pork, and can drive a score or so of hogs and cattle to the city 

 market, he is content, though his cellar may not contain even the ghost of a supply of 

 fruits and vegetables. Mistaken notion ! 



Mistaken, I term it, because he has not realized the fact that he is neglecting very 

 important and necessary branches of his calling. I emphasize the terms, and would 

 almost say ///I? /waf/" important and necessary. He is neglecting what, if rightly consid- 

 ered, will conserve in a high degree to his enjoyment, and yield him a large percentage 

 of the good things of life. For what does a man till the soil, and for what does he labor 

 with his hands, if not that he may enjoy the blessings which Providence sends as the 

 crowning result? To my mind, there is nothing clearer than that the production of the 

 various fruits and vegetables in profusion, and their increased use in the many forms 

 modern science has taught us to prepare them, would conduce to the enjoyment, the 

 happiness, and the health of the people. And I will go still further, and say that I 

 believe it would tend to a higher mental and moral development of the race. 



When we remember that an ample supply of all these things for the wants and needs 

 of his household, can be produced from so small a plat of ground, and with compara- 

 tively so small an outlay of labor, it is astonishing that so many of our farmers neglect 

 them. True, it has come to be admitted by all farmers of any pretentions, that an apple 

 orchard of some sort is a proper appendage to a farm ; and most farmers at this day con- 

 template an outlay for one, this year, or at some time in the future. And this outlay, in 

 very many cases, is generously small ; yet most farmers of means can show at least a 

 few trees, many of them stinted and uncared for, to be sure, but capable of Ijearing fruit 

 and being called an orchard. 



But among all the well-to-do farmers around us, how many can show an acre, or 

 even a quarter of an acre, of small fruits ? How many have planted even a dozen Con- 

 cord grapes, or half a hundred raspberries, or can show three square rods of strawberries .■' 

 How many have a bed of that rich and healthful plant, asparagus, or how many have 

 even tasted of celery or salsify ? I cannot undertake to answer these questions, but we 

 all know that the number is extremely small. 



The cultivation of these things on the farm is necessary in another point of view. 

 It diversifies the otherwise too monstrous labors of the farmer's household. To occupy 

 a few hours now and then, in planting and pruning, hoeing and spading, and budding 

 and grafting, gives a grateful diversity to the arduous duties of the boys on a farm, and 

 I doubt not tends largely to render them satisfied with their calling. Every fruit or 

 ornamental tree planted, every quart of raspberries or strawberries, every bunch of 

 grapes grown and consumed by that household, is a rivet, so to speak, to hold its mem- 

 bers together. And to carry the idea a little farther : every rose tree planted and tended 

 by the mother and daughters of that household, every vase of flowers or wreathing vine, 

 fashioned by their fair hands, is a heaven-sent blessing to draw them nearer to each 

 other, and to purify their affections. 



The pleasures and enjoyments resulting from horticultural pursuits cannot be de- 

 termined by a cash value. Many of them are of such a character that money cannot 

 purchase them. Pleasures of this character are not to be weighed by gold. Yet there 

 is a money value in horticulture to the farmer that ought not to be lightly esteemed; 

 his apple, and pear, and peach trees, (I say nothing about a commercial orchard), or his 



