No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 219 



dener is more or less interested in agriculture, and flori-culture lays 

 claim to its share of atteution also. 



While agriculture is the oldest among the professions, and horti- 

 culture comes in a good second, flori-culture is possibly the most re- 

 cent of all. Everyone connected with any of these three professions, 

 however, can without hesitation be pronounced tillers of the coil. 



Our grandfathers and grandmothers would have scouted the idea 

 of offering for sale their beautiful and fragrant blossoms, though 

 as gifts nothing would be more freely given or better appreciated 

 or give more genuine pleasure; but to barter them for gold or silver 

 would to them have been sacrilege in the extreme; and as nothing 

 is so. appropriate for gifts as flowers and gives more pleasure, and 

 because everyone who desired to have flowers to give and could not 

 have them without buying, was, in this commercial age, the founda- 

 tion of floriculture as a profession. 



Twenty-five or thirty years ago nearly all the retail flower stores 

 in Philadelphia had a greenhouse establishment of their own for 

 growing cut flowers for sale, and when additional flowers were 

 needed, the retailers often found it necessary to buy from each other 

 or from greenhouses in the suburbs; and the gardeners and pro- 

 prietors of amateur establishments were frequently tempted by coin 

 to help out when the demand fortlowers was superior to the supply 



The greenhouse establishments in the suburbs of Philadelphia in 

 those days, where cut flowers were more or less a specialty and where 

 the florists yet did a general retail business, found after a few years' 

 experience that the wholesale part of their business, where they 

 disposed of their surplus among the city retailers, was very much 

 the most satisfactory. And that w^as the cause of establishments 

 being started about twenty years ago, both outside and inside the 

 city limits for the purpose of growing cut flowers to sell exclusively 

 at wholesale to the city retailers, and since that time numerous 

 places for the same purpose have been started, which have met with 

 encouraging success. 



It was found that where a retail and a wholesale business was con- 

 ducted jointly there were conflictions. When the suburban green- 

 houses needed the most flowers, the city florists could use them in 

 greater numbers also. 



About the time stated above, namely, in the year 1880, many flow- 

 ers found their way in regular shipments both from New York and 

 Boston, but at the present time there are more Philadelphia grown 

 roses sold in Boston that there are Boston roses sold in Philadelphia. 

 Boston and New York were both in advance of Philadelphia in the 

 production of cut flowers in those days, and possibly they are to- 

 day in many respects. The growers for both those cities have a dis- 

 tinctly different way of disposing of their flowers at wholesale than 



