88 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



corn, cabbages, and the tomato — how to grow the apple, peach, plum, 

 quince, and pear, and the various small fruits, with profit. We want to 

 know, also, how to protect these from the effects of insects and 

 blight. These problems will be settled here no doubt. But market gar- 

 dening for profit needs no special encouragement. In the vicinity of 

 every town and city there are numerous gardens which are being carried 

 on with the highest perfection of the art, and with the very best improved 

 } ppliances and implements. 



Our markets are supplied in abundance with the best flowers, fruits, 

 and vegetables that the progress of the age can suggest. These things 

 can be had at a fair price, so that men burdened with professional care 

 do not feel that practical gardening is needful for either comfort or 

 health. 



I am to call your attention for a few moments to a particular phase of 

 the subject — "The value of practical horticulture to the professional 

 man." As a rule, professional men give no attention to horticulture, 

 neither for profit nor pleasure. They feel that it does not pay, or that 

 the business is imcompatible with the dignity of their profession, or in 

 some way unfitted for their line in life. The professional man who cul- 

 tivates a garden is an exception. How many lawyers, doctors, teachers, 

 or preachers do you know who raise all the fruit and vegetables they con- 

 sume in their families? How many cultivate flowers to beautify their 

 homes? A few words of encouragement to such may not be out of place. 



Now, I desire to maintain that a garden and orchard will pay the pro- 

 fessional man. Every man should seek to have a home of his own with a 

 large lot — the large lot for many reasons: (1) because, with good man- 

 agement and industry, it will pay in dollars and cents to grow his own 

 fruits and vegetables; (2) because he can have that out-door exercise 

 which he so much needs; (3) because he can cultivate those domestic vir- 

 tues so desirable in every home; (4) because he can have such practical 

 and scientific enjoyment in the products of his own labor as he can get 

 nowhere else. 



A good garden goes a long way toward living. Except bread and meat, 

 a large part of the provisions for the table may be taken from the gai'- 

 den ; and where the lot is large enough, a portion of the meat bill may be 

 paid from the garden; and if we were to eat more vegetables and less 

 meat, the fact above stated would be easily realized and we should feel 

 enough better for the exchange. 



A man may in his garden grow all the ordinary vegetables. He may 

 grow in this climate his own peas, potatoes and parsnips; his own corn, 

 cucumbers, and cabbages; his. celery, carrots, and cauliflowers; and then 

 there is the lettuce, the radish, and the melon, the potato, the turnip, and 

 the onion, the beets, beans, and the squashes, and many more vegetable 

 luxuries too numerous to mention. 



Among the small fruits, one may raise the strawberry, gooseberry, cur- 

 rant, and the luscious grape. 



In the orchard we may have the cherry, peach, and plum, the apple, 

 quince, and pear. These and many more good things may be had in their 

 season fresh from earth, tree, and vine. And oh! how much more deli- 

 cious and palatable are vegetables and fruits fresh from our gardens, as 



