WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 189 



not recognize it. You will wonder still more when I tell you that all 

 that planting was done by the hundreds of thousands of trees, and 

 nearly all in one year, so that the beautiful park we now so love to 

 visit was all in the mind of this landscape gardener, Prof. M. G. Kern, 

 in its perfect beauty years and years ago. So we are trying to-day to 

 plant and induce planting of all onr public grounds and schoolyards. 



Do you think there is any other business or profession which offers 

 better opportunities or inducements than does the horticultural work 

 of this State? I tell you we want earnest, enthusiastic horticulturists, 

 who are willing to work and study, and open up new lines of labor and 

 the general upbuilding of the cause. 



We have call day after day for good, energetic, enthusiastic, en- 

 lightened horticulturists all over the country ; places are ready for many 

 a man, if they were only ready to step in and fill them. 



A love for this business must be a prime motive power or we are 

 not so sure of success. There is a sort of pride in the heart of every 

 man to see whatever he has in hand prosper and grow to a successful 

 end. In no line of work is this more noticeable than in the mind of the 

 horticulturist, for when he begins to plant orchards, to lay out lawns, 

 open out parks, fill our green-houses with cuttings and plants, deco- 

 rate our streets or beautify our flower beds, or even perfect our vegeta- 

 bles — when this mania for planting and growth has once hold of you it 

 will develop such a love for the work that you will never let it go. So 

 much for the pleasant work of our State society — the outlook is 

 brighter, if this is pleasant. 



I believe that the first lessons I took' in horticulture were when my 

 mother took me into the yard or garden, where we had a small nursery 

 of seedling trees, and showed me how to bud them in the top branches 

 or how to change some of our June roses by the same means into our 

 best hybrid perpetuals. Ever since that time I have planted and 

 planted and planted in our yards, in our parks, in our nurseries and in 

 our orchards, by the thousands and thousands, until it seems to me that 

 I should be entirely lost if I could not as each spring-time comes 

 point out a new place or a new orchard. 



If we look at the condition of horticulture at that time, or even 

 here in Missouri twenty years ago, we find orchards of few varieties, 

 prominently the Jenneting, orchards of few acres, orchards with but 

 little care, no special effort at orcharding, no special plan as to varie- 

 ties, no special markets in view, a sort of haphazard manner of doing 

 all these things in an easy-go-long way, resulting often, of course, in 

 quite a number of dollars as pay for the marketing ; and yet it was a 

 lesson to no one, or rather a lesson of laziness. Of course we have too 



