SUMMER MEETING. 93 



than another of the same species, but no amount of nursing or moving 

 about will ever change a tender plant into a hardy one. But by intro- 

 ducing new elements, as in cross-fertilization, we may multiply the 

 causes for wide variation through the different hereditary characteris- 

 tics of both parents. Why the seeds of plants should produce both 

 tender and hardy varieties can only be accounted for upon the hypo- 

 thesis that each possesses hereditary transmitted characteristics; but 

 what the nature of the laws are that control this transmission we 

 know little or nothing. We can form no conception why the advantage 

 from a cross is directed exclusively to the vegetable system, and some- 

 times to the reproductive system, but commonly to both. It is equally 

 inconceivable why some individuals of the same species should be 

 sterile, while others are fully fertile with their own pollen : why a 

 change of climate should either lessen or increase the sterility of self- 

 fertile species, and why the individuals of some species should be 

 even more fertile with pollen from a distinct species than with their 

 own pollen, as with many other facts so obscure that we stand in awe 



before the mystery of life. 



John Craig, 



Horticulturist Dominion Experimental Farms, before Committee on Agriculture, 

 House of Commons, in Farmers' Review. 



Horticulture as Related to Home. 



BY M. W. SERL, LEBANON. 



The aesthetic sense, if inborn, can at first exist only as a germ, to 

 remain dormant or to develop, as conditions may favor. In the infancy 

 of the race, when our ancestors were the contemporaries of the cave 

 bear and the mastodon, and dwellers in the caverns of the earth, a 

 fierce struggle for existence, with only clubs and stones for weapons, 

 precluded the idea of attention to anything not essential to defense or 

 to a supply of daily necessities ; but as time passed men came to more 

 assured positions, and the sense of the beautiful was manifest in rude 

 decorations of the person, by painting the body with such attractive 

 colors as were at hand, by hanging bells about the neck or pluming 

 the head with gaudy feathers. 



Caves and huts gave place to more pretentious dwellings and to 

 more ornate constructions for various purposes, while gold, silver and 

 precious stones furnished ornaments of a higher type of personal 



