280 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of some millions to the inch, they look so frightful, particularly when 

 their shape is considered in connection with their overwhelming num- 

 bers, that a disinterested observer must wonder how a single fruit does 

 here and there get through the lines of the fungi and the helvetii, the 

 phylloxera and the bacteria and cogomica and aphidse and peristyles, 

 that seek to thwart the fair scheme of nature that begins with blos- 

 soms and is scheduled to end with fruit. On the other hand, consider 

 the jimson how it grows, and tell me what borer, or root-louse, or cur- 

 culio, or gouge, or coleoptera, or lepidoptera, even so much as threat- 

 ened the peace of the aforesaid jimson, or demanded a recount or a 

 delimitation of its frontiers. Nothing of the sort occurs. The jimson 

 goes right along in the middle of the row, like a Populist, and when 

 you read of the flower of the field that was cut down, why that was 

 more than likely the work of some exasperated farmer among his jim- 

 sons. 



THEIR PEKSISTENCE. 



Then again, in both its flower and in its fruit the jimson is mark- 

 edly different from the fruit that makes you rich, when you have any, 

 in point of perseverance. Take a grape plant or a peach tree for 

 instance: if anything happens so that they can't flower at just such a 

 season, they won't flower at all ; while a jimson will begin before it is 

 time to start if it is only big enough, and keep right at it with a dili 

 gence worthy of a better cause till stopped by destruction or frost 

 A thrifty jimson and an average quince-tree are about the same size 

 the fruit of one is elegant in its way, the fruit of the other is abso 

 lutely worthless for any purpose but that of its own reproduction 

 Perhaps you will get one luscious quince for fifty blossoms ; the jim 

 son won't miss once ; its flower will scarcely be dropped before the 

 fruit will be ready while you wait. But the jimson won't wait ; it will 

 go right on putting out more flowers and putting up more fruit, when 

 there is already more than enough, just like some housekeepers 1 

 know. Those plants that make the most fuss with their flowers are 

 commonly of the least account for their fruit. Frequent illustrations 

 of this can be seen on river bottom farms, where the old-time practice 

 still holds of raising morning-glories and corn together. These two 

 crops supplement each other in a most interesting manner ; the corn 

 holds the morning-glories up, and the glories hold the corn together. 

 There have been fields of corn in the adjoining county so thoroughly 

 bound up in this way that it would be impossible to abstract one hill, I 

 am told, without sending a quiver through the whole field- It is not 

 of that, however, which I wish to speak, but of the fact that the gaudy 

 flower of the morning-glory famora gloriana) results in nothing better 



