STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. I9 



ment of Agriculture at Washington, though new and presenting as vet no 

 fine large specimens, is one of the most complete in the \vorld, Commis- 

 sioner Capron informs me, and is a worthy monument of that staunch 

 and stixid horticulturist, William Saunders. " Excgit monumeniufn cere 

 fercnniusr The order of arrangement is given on page 122 of the 

 Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for 1S68, and is worth 

 studying and imitating. Mr. Saunders, as he expressed it, " laid down 

 Gray's Manual on the ground." An arboretum is embraced among the 

 plans of the Horticultural Department at the Industrial University of 

 our State, and will cover about ten acres. 



4. Collections ok Flowers are pretty numerous, but I do not 

 know any at all complete and well maintained attempts at variety in 

 this direction. As in vegetables, amateurs follow out specialties; one 

 making a collection of roses, another of pansies, ik.c. 



5. General Collections of plants, or botanical gardens, are beyond 

 the reach of most individuals, and quite rare, in this country, at any rate. 

 Probably the finest in the West is that of Henry Shaw, a wealthy 

 citizen of St. Louis, who is devoting a part of his large means to the 

 planting of an arboretum of over twenty-five acres and a fruticetum, and 

 the collecting of numerous tropical fruits. I spent a few hours at the place 

 some days since, and saw some small part of one of the greatest horticul- 

 tural collections in the country. 



I have thus spoken briefly and imperfectly, if at considerable length, 

 of many points in the great trinity of Useful, Ornamental, and Scientific 

 Horticulture, holding it to be best for exact ideas that the whole ground 

 be mapped out plainly, even if not correctly. 



I need not much insist upon the dignity and attractiveness of this 

 pursuit before this audience. In all time. Horticulture has been the 

 favorite pursuit of the more advanced races and of the foremost men. 

 It was, we are told, the occupation of oiw first parents, and our second 

 ancestor planted a vineyard, if he did not make an altogether commend- 

 able use of the product. Tlie luinging gardens of Babylon were the 

 wonder of tlie ancient ^vorld, and the sculptures of old Egypt reveal the 

 esteem in which the art was held in that dim and distant time. The 

 Homeric poems with their Garden of Alcinous, whose " fruit never 

 perishes, nor does it fail winter nor summer, lasting throughout the 

 whole year; but the west wind ever blowing makes some bud forth and 

 ripens others" — their Isle of Calypso, where "four fountains flowed in 

 succession, with white water, turned near one another, each in diflereut 

 ways, but around there flourished soft meadows of violets and of pars- 

 ley" — bear witness of otlier and ancient days, as did Tlieocritus, and 

 Virgil, and Horace, in their time. 



It was Lord Bacon who said: "God Almighty first planted a gar- 

 den," and, indeed, it is the purest of all human pleasures. It is the 

 greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and 

 palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see that when 

 ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner 

 than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." 



