322 Missouri State Horticultural Society. * 



never forget that there are amateurs who love, as well as growers 

 who profit by, the advance of horticulture. 



PRIMITIVE HORTICULTURE. 



Prof, J. B. Steere, of the University, said : Fruits are 

 attractive to the eye and taste for the same reason that seeds of 

 dandelions and thistles have downy wings, or burdocks have spines, 

 to enable the seeds to be distributed and the plants disseminated 

 over wide areas. Fruit seeds are largely carried from place to place 

 by birds, and were the fruit of neutral tints, or disagreeable flavor, 

 birds would neither notice, taste nor devour them. Fruits were 

 the earliest food of man, as they are of the larger aj)es, which have 

 no fire to render digestible by cooking the portions of such starchy 

 plants as are used for food. For ages man has been cultivating the 

 various starchy foods, such as the potato, artichoke, etc., until now 

 there is scarcely a family of plants which does not contribute to his 

 support. 



After primitive man had begun the cultivation of fi'uits and 

 roots, the next step in advance was the improvement of imple- 

 ments, irrigation and the use of fertilizers. The gathering into 

 settlements and towns was a natural sequence, aud then man ceased 

 to be savage. The plow and the spade are characteristic of this 

 stage. Ownership of laud, Avealth and hixury followed, and new 

 channels of gratification sought ; men turned to the long neglected 

 fruits; and the cultivation of them began. The Eastern hemis- 

 phere has produced most of the important fruits ; the American 

 continent but a few. American cultivation has been turned to the 

 small fruits, sucli as the strawberry, and crossing our species with 

 closely allied European varieties, by which means an improved 

 product has been originated, bivilized man, like the savages, uses 

 his fruits and starches for the manufacture of intoxicants. 



W'Hittier's poem on the burning Busn. 



Oh, someLinies gleams upon our siglit 

 Through present wrong the Eternal Right ! 

 And step by step, since time began. 

 We see the steady gain of man ; — 



That all of good the past hath had 

 Remains to make our own time glad, 

 Our common daily life divine, 

 And every land a Palestine. 



We lack but open eye and ear 

 To find the Orient's marvels here, 



