488 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I like to grow potatoes for 40 cents a peck, but it grinds to have to grow theni 

 for 40 cents per bushel. 

 Adjourned to 1:30 o'clock. 



Aftekkoon Session. 



The convention came together at half past one and as the first topic for 

 the afternoon; Prof. James Satterlee was called on to make his report as 

 chairman of the committee on landscape gardening. Prof. Satterlee 

 responded by saying that he had chosen to present a paper on a matter to 

 which he had given considerable study rather than make a formal report. 



SOME RELIGIOUS AND SUPERSTITIOUS NOTIONS REGARDING PLANTS 



AND TREES. 



BY J. SATTEKLEE. 



Among the many interesting facts we find in our study of mankind is the curi- 

 ous notions regarding objects about us. At a certain period in the intellectual 

 and moral prpgress or condition of man, nearly every people have attributed 

 supernatural powers to all the animate and inanimate objects about them. 

 The various forms of animal life, plants, rocks, mountains, rivers, lakes, and 

 all the varied phenomena of nature have claimed a share of this veneration. 

 A part of this veneration comes doubtless from the inabilty of the savage to 

 explain the various phenomena of the world about him ; a part of it from the 

 mysterious phenomena connected with life and death. The savage sees 

 unconsciousness come over the form of his companion as in natural sleep; he 

 sees a suspension of all the phenomena of life as in swoons and trances, from 

 which he awakes after an hour, or it may be days, of unconsciousness ; then 

 comes that other sleep so like the last that the difference does not seem to be 

 absolute until decomposition supervenes. These events are strange and 

 unexplainable to the savage mind. Then he notices the world about him. 

 The budding plant, the expanding leaf and fragrant flower, the towering tree, 

 the gnarled forms and the writhing and creaking boughs of the forest in the 

 storm, and the still small voices of the forest at rest. These all have sugges- 

 tions of mystery and bring to the untutored soul the idea that some mysterious 

 power is connected with it all that is beyond human comprehension. This 

 veneration is the feeling that comes to man when he realizes the presence of 

 the infinite. It is at this point that God reveals himself as the author of 

 the external world about us, and as the great first cause of all the phenomena 

 connected with it. 



Ethnologists have defined religion to be a perfectly natural and normal feel- 

 ing that comes to every man in the presence of wiiat he deems to bo the infi- 

 nite. Superstition arises from the imagination in a dark and gloomy state. 

 I had thought to separate these two ideas in the treatment of the subject 

 before me, but find it more ditlicult than at first might be supposed. In all 

 the information I can obtain upon the religious and superstitious notions 

 regarding plants and trees in different authors, I find the two states of mind 



