326 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tion of timber to man's shelter, the relation of the plant kingdom to 

 the animal, and classifies both kingdoms into species, genera, families 

 and classes. 



Who can estimate the far-reaching influence of such rational teach- 

 ing of nature upon the well-being and happiness of mankind? Man and 

 nature — master and servant — heir and heritage — created He them. 

 Man on the one hand, with his multiplied needs — physical, intellectual, 

 moral ; of food, clothing, shelter and transportation ; of conceptions 

 of truth, beauty and right; great nature — continents, oceans, envelop- 

 ing atmosphere; resources, properties, forces — on the other, to supply 

 these needs. When God, our Father, from eternity past, projected his 

 creative energy, through all the bewildering forces, activities, trans- 

 formations and products of nature — through all the motives, ideals, 

 designs and deeds of man to eternity to come, He had but one supreme 

 object in view, the perfecting of man created in His imige. Every 

 force that throbbed back in the earliest and most distant azoic era was 

 fashioning earth for the abode of man ; had in view the seed-time and 

 harvest, the blossoming flower and the ripening fruit. In every march 

 to battle, whether under the leadership of savage chief, with rude 

 implements of warfare and doing homage to his mysterious Manitou, 

 or military captain, trained in the arts of modern warfare, and worship- 

 ing the true and living God; in the rise and fall of leaders, empires 

 and dynasties ; philosophies, doctrines and religions ; reforms and revo- 

 lutions; in the birth and death of worlds, Divinity has had but one 

 supreme object — the destiny of man. Such man's inheritance, if in the 

 spirit of inquiry, in love and admiration, he woo great nature ; such 

 the promised land which Deity bide us go into and possess. For cen- 

 turies man, confronted with this nature, crouched and feared. No rich 

 heritage was his till he stood erect and inquired and loved. Every 

 inventor who, during the centuries past, has harnessed a natural pro- 

 perty or force to do man's bidding, has done so by observation and the 

 investigation of rplations — through sense perception and appercep- 

 tion. Only a meager heritage will ever be vouchsafed to those who 

 gorge their memories on text-book natural science to the death of their 

 sense-preception and understanding. 



The inventor, wooing nature in proper spirit, with senses and 

 understanding awake, grasps the relations of nature's properties and 

 forces to man's needs, and transmits the heritage to coming millions. 

 Man needs movement in machinery or in transportation of passengers 

 or freight. The inventor observes the movement of the stream and 

 hitches this movement to his boat or water wheel. The great Eads 

 hitches the moving waters to the accumulated sands and cleans out 



