STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 245 



and the west, and Kansas in particular is to a large extent timbered in this way. 

 Strangely enough they And believers fur snch nonsense, but of course, among that yet 

 too large claaa v. ho do the most of their thinking by proxy, choosing the poorest kind 

 of proxy at that. 



Another fallacy is that of reasoning the present timber supply equal to that of former 

 days, because the young: groves make such an astonishing growth. People so arguing 

 forget to count out the area of stumps going every year under cultivation from which 

 the large timber has been cut oil", and which exceeds many times the increase of area 

 of the young growth. Finally the most pernicious idea is that the outside supply of 

 the away off forests will last as long as you and I want wood, and the evils to come, 

 are to be left for the people to come. This is like eating up all the present substance, 

 and leaving a patrimony of debt to our heirs. No philanthropist will follow such a 

 course of reasoning. In the light of the undeniable fact that the whole forestry of 

 our country is very rapidly welling away, every good man should desire earnestly that 

 the good work of economizing present resources and creating new ones, should go on, 

 that Arboriculture should become a common and wide spread industrial pursuit of 

 absorbing interest to the swarms of working men of the country. Only let the great 

 lever power of pecuniary interest be brought to bear, and success is sure. Prove that 

 plenty of money is to be made, and disciples will flock to the standard of almost any 

 faith. 



In taking up Artificial Arboriculture, it will not be necessary to include the common 

 or domestic fruiting trees, though strictly they come within the pale of our subject, 

 but they are already the objects of the care of the Horticultural and Pomo'.ogical 

 Societies, and as this committee is expected to do for the society what the snow plow 

 does for the locomotives — simply clear the track — we will proceed to classify the 

 departments ot Artificial Arboriculture, leaving out the fruits, and feeling that with 

 the material reduction, the subject is still far too large. Artificial plantations are 

 made for Ornament, for Protection and for Prolit. The Decorative department includes 

 the many beautiful forms used to grace the home plat, or to make up a general land- 

 scape effect. 



Utilitarian as is the present age, the taste for ornament seems to fully keep up with 

 the increase of ability to preserve and possess forms of beauty and of grace. No better 

 moral effect can be produced upon any mind than will result from the study and labors 

 of decorative art, where the forms and combinations used arc of Nature's production. 

 .Mo-t persons have felt the chilling, repelling effect upon the sensibilities, produced by 

 that anomaly of taste, a homestead, with good buildings and destitute of trees or 

 shrubberies. Unless the location is so new as to preclude the possibility of sylvan 

 adornment, the judgment of the passer by is against the taste, against all of the better 

 parts of the proprietor. Such homes produce the bearish boys and boydenish girls, 

 whose lack of culture, lack of refinement, often even lack of morality, make them dis- 

 agreeably remarkable in a community. The human heart that is full of benevolence, 

 charity, sublimity, veneration for creative power, is always full of love for the forms of 

 beauty designed by immaculate wisdom. 



The noticeably rapid progress in Decorative Arboriculture, which is surely indicative 

 of a like progress In moral culture, la one of the most hopeful signs of the times. lint 

 still the mass of the farming community are not yet waked up to ornamental tree 

 planting ; many a homestead having nothing better than a bleak locust, or some such 



