30 State Horticultural Society, 



the black soil and note its growth day by day than to rule an empire. 

 They are the sanest, sweetest souls I have ever known, men who knew 

 sun and cloud and sky and the whole willful, wonderful, beautiful 

 ways of nature, lovers of the seasons, and witnesses of daily miracles 

 more strange and unaccountable than any of human lore or sacred 

 page." 



How beautifully did the Great Teacher impress, from the very 

 things which are a part of the horticulturist's daily life, the most ex- 

 alted spiritual truth. The fowls of the air and the lilies of the fields ; 

 the growing blade of corn and the teeming branches of the vine ; the fig 

 tree shooting forth its tender bud or scattering its untimely fruit; the 

 grain cast from the sower's hand and the smallest seeds springing up 

 into branching trees — all, under His Divine interpretation, teach lessons 

 of the deepest spiritual truth ; and how sharply did he reprove the men 

 of his time for their dullness in not learning these simple lessons. Otn- 

 whole inward world of thought and feeling- is built up of material 

 which we draw from the outward world about us ; and in everything 

 that grows we should see that which leads our thoughts toward and 

 binds us in love and gratitude to our great benefactor. 



The most common and obvious characteristic of the world of vege- 

 tation is beauty and design. The most practical and matter-of-fact 

 gardener can not escape noting the symmetry, harmony, variety, deli- 

 cacy and perfection of the things that grow all about him. The horti- 

 culturist should see in the rows of rosy apples from his orchard, the 

 crates of luscious berries from his vines, the roses and hyacinths from 

 his conservatory, more than so many dollars' valuation. They should 

 teach him that everything the Creator has made is the perfection of 

 beauty, design and adaptation. The trees are clothed with graceful forms 

 to please the taste for the beautiful, as well as to provide fruit for food 

 to the hungry. Unity and variety, contrast and correspondence, are 

 balanced and blended through all nature to secure the perfect and uni- 

 versal harmony. Everywhere in human designs we expect this order 

 and correspondence, and if it is wanting, the whole work is pronounced 

 an offense to the feelings and a libel upon nature. This beauty and 

 order and symmetry, the love of which is an intuitive and universal pas- 

 sion, is very pronounced in the world of growing things. We need no 

 cultivation in science to perceive the unity and variety, the contrasts and 

 correspondence of light and shade, in the flower. Everybody sees and 

 everybody says they are beautiful. The hundreds of thousands of spe~ 

 cies of flowers that adorn the earth and preserve their individual char- 

 acter from century to century were all designed and shaped and colored 

 with infinite variety by the master mind of the universe. I have heard 



