68 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Such a border is easily watered with a sprinkliug-pot, if you are not 

 fortunate enough to have hose and water works, while the waste water 

 from the kitchen is to the flowers both meat and drink. 



With larger grounds may come beds of geraniums, coleus, canuas, and 

 the other large plants, though a few geraniums would be at home in our 

 border; but a lawn must be quite extensive before these will be admis- 

 sible at or near its center. 



But I am not concerning myself with such conditions. I am urging 

 the beginnings of such things. I am pleading with the average man, and 

 I want him to put sunflowers about his premises, as a beginning, if he 

 can have nothing better. Sunflowers are infinitely better than burdocks 

 and heaps of old boots and despoiled tomato cans. 



Of the moral and esthetic influences of flowers I shall leave my friend 

 Garfield to speak, for he can tell of them so eloquently. I urge the culti- 

 vation of flowers for sake of their loveliness and the limitless measure of 

 satisfaction they will give the cultivator, his family, his friends, and 

 the public. 



If at first you can ouly train a morning-glory up some strings tacked to 

 the house, or break the ground next the fence and let some marigolds 

 grow there, do at least these things. You will be so pleased with your 

 success and its results that the next season you will undertake more. As 

 years pass, the spring will not come soon enough, the morning dawn early 

 enough, nor the soothing twilight last long enough, to gratify your pui'e 

 and elevating and holy liking for your flowers and their companionship. 



This, I must sorrowfully admit, can not be the happy lot of every man ; 

 for a few men there are whose natures are too obtuse for such refined 

 pleasures. But they are as rare as are those unfortunates who have no 

 music in their souls, and like these they are not fit for noble deeds nor 

 for the unreserved confidence of their fellows. 



FOREST FIRES. 



BY DR. W. J. BEAL, MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



I presume there is not a topic to be discussed at this meeting in which 

 the people of this locality take less interest than the one concerning for- 

 est fires, and it requires some courage to make such a selection, especiaP^ 

 here in the woods so recently inhabited by Indians, where the great prob- 

 lem has been how best to get rid of trees, and if possible in the meantime 

 to get a little something for a portion of the best. But times are chang- 

 ing ; I notice it even here at one of the remote corners of the state. 

 I wish to tell you that southern Michigan is importing a good deal of 

 whitewood and pine from the southern states. At the house I live in, at 

 the Agricultural College, there has just been put down a floor to a porch, 

 made of southern pine. What is the matter up here? Why do you not 

 send in some of your surplus Norway pine or oak, and thus keep down 

 competition? 



