268 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



reward the generous and tasteful exhibitors of these beautiful 

 gems of nature, somewhat in proportion to their merits. 



Productions of the orchard, the vineyard and the field, also 

 help fill and crowd your halls. They all originate in flowers, 

 and, although exceedingly tempting to the mere animal taste, 

 they are but the material of apple dumplings, johnny cakes, 

 beef, pork and fast horses. They still receive high, honorable 

 premiums, while flowers — bright, fragrant, beautiful flowers, 

 "parents of all the vegetable world," — have only a trifling 

 " gratuity." Well may the fig tree refuse to blossom under 

 such a dispensation. 



No one who has a note of music, or a love of the beautiful in 

 his soul, can contemplate these magnificent contributions from 

 the flower gardens of a Lawrence, an Oliver, a Walker, a Thorn- 

 ton, a Harmon, a Minot, a Gardner, a Turner and others, with- 

 out admiration for the refined taste of producers, and a most 

 lively sense of gratitude for such unmistakable evidences of a 

 divine purpose in the "Father of all" to feed the high moral 

 as well as the physical wants of all his children. Such a display 

 of beauty, innocence and purity, in floral gems, is worthy of 

 man. It gives an almost unappreciable charm to every other 

 department of your exhibition, and prompts us most earnestly 

 to ask that future committees on flowers may not want, as we 

 do, more abundant means to encourage even the most humble 

 efforts to cheer and beautify the earth, and your halls, with 

 these wonderful productions. 



However much may have been said or sung in praise of flori- 

 culture, its importance in harmonizing the discordant elements 

 of humanity has never been duly appreciated. The child, 

 whose early life is devoted to a pure love of the beautiful in 

 nature, is almost sure to have a future unfailing love of his 

 home, his country and his God. The home of the free Switzer 

 is said to be sacred to him by his recollections of cultivating 

 flowers in childhood. It nerves his arm in his country's defence. 

 Pure patriotism is not the mushroom production of a night. 

 " It grows with our growth and strengthens with our strength." 



One recollection of a happy childhood is far more efiicient in 

 the salvation of one's country than a thousand aspirations after 

 political preferment. As wealth is valueless without the means 

 of securing its possession, what can utilitarians even, who scorn 



