256 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



admired for its fine rows of thickly growing forest trees along the streets. One 

 soft maple on Main street was broken down by wind, and when cut up made 

 two and a quarter cords of eighteen-incli wood, and the owner of it said he 

 planted it there twenty-one years before; the stump measured nineteen inches 

 in diameter inside the bark, and I could count about twenty circles outside of 

 its red heart. Other trees on the same street were planted seventeen years ago 

 last spring. The largest elm measures four feet around, two feet above the 

 ground, and a maple measures three feet eight inches. I could give many 

 more facts and figures to show that it does pay for Americans to plant forest 

 trees both for fuel and timber, and that very few enterprises they can take hold 

 of will pay better. — H. Ives m Practical Farmer. 



VEOETABLE GAEDEN. 



THE GARDEN AND HEALTH. 



The perfumes and fragrance of the flower garden, and the life and purity 

 of the vegetable garden, are both health-giving and pleasure-giving to any one 

 who is able to walk amidst the beauty, if he can do as he pleases, work or let 

 it alone. If he has a good, strong constitution, and a fair degree of health, 

 work in the garden will not prove detrimental, but will be useful. But the veg- 

 etable garden is no place for a feeble constitution, or for health that cannot stand 

 a strain, unless the gardening is done for pleasure and not for profit. There are 

 no harder- worked men in the world than our market gardeners, and any 

 garden that is expected to pay anything must be closely attended to. The 

 gardeners near our large cities work from twelve to sixteen hours a day, and 

 their work is never entirely ended, whatever may bo the season. Much of such 

 labor as the garden requires is done in inclement weather, too, and if a person in 

 feeble physical condition attempts to improve his health by working in a rain- 

 storm, his expectations will not be realized. There are so many things, also, in 

 gardening that need the watchful care of the proprietor, and which cannot safely 

 be left to the care of help, that there is a constant strain upon the physical and 

 mental strength. It is strange, rather amusing, to hear people whose blood is 

 chilled at the slightest touch of a breeze, and who have no constitution to bear 

 the lightest exposure, express the determination to enter upon the business of 

 gardening. It is no business for anybody except a strong, healthy person. 



But if it were conducted as we have often seen family gardens managed, it 

 would have no detrimental effect upon the health, hoAvever enfeebled it might 

 be, and still less effect upon the pocket. It is a sorry sight to see a garden 

 neglected until it becomes a patch of matted weeds. Neglect on any part of 

 the farm is bad enough, and the resulting appearance is deplorable, but no 

 neglect results so offensively to the eye as that of the garden. We have 

 frequently urged, in the season for it, that a garden be laid out, if it never 

 had" been, but really no garden at all is preferable to a garden of weeds. If 



