446 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



PAPERS. 



HOW I HAVE TAUGHT HORTICULTURE TO BEGINNERS. 

 [Read before tlie Illinois Horticultural Society at Centralia, Dec. 8-10, 1885.] 



During the last year I have had the honor of instructing, as I be- 

 lieve, the first class in horticulture ever organized in connection with 

 an otherwise strictly literary institution in the country. 



Without text-book or curriculum it was no easy task to provide, 

 from day to day, for the succeeding lesson. 



Assuming that the student was somewhat familiar with the re- 

 lated sciences — botany, geology, chemistry, meteorology, zoology, etc., 

 or that he was to receive such instruction from the proper teacher, I 

 only proposed to give him such practical hints as would enable him to 

 apply his scientific knowledge to the every day affairs of life. 



Horticulture is an art, not a science. It is a branch of agriculture 

 and includes pomology, vegetable gardening, landscape gardening, 

 floriculture, the proi)agation of trees and plants, or the nursery, for- 

 estry, etc. 



The botanist studies the structure and habits of plants with a view 

 to their classification and scientific arrangement. For this purpose he 

 prefers the natural plant — the one which best represents its species 

 and not the cultivated plant. In this particular he differs from the 

 horticulturist, whose greatest delight is in causing nature to succumb 

 to the influence of his arts. 



The botanist pursues his highest scientific investigations through 

 a study of the wild rose with its simple flower of five petals, and, as a 

 scientist, fails to admire the gaudy queen of the garden, while the hor- 

 ticulturist finds his greatest delight in producing the widest deviations 

 from nature's ways. 



Our handsome flowers and luscious fruits are the products of the 

 " art which does mend nature." 



Varieties are the result of domestication. The apple of the for- 

 ests of Europe, from which our numerous varieties have sprung, was 

 scarcely an edible fruit ; and had it remained uninterrupted in its nat- 

 ural forests unto this day it would have continued to reproduce its 

 species {jpyvus malus) with the same and almost definite character of 

 its offspring as characterizes our maples and beeches of the wild- 

 woods. 



