244 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Along the Missouri river the hills are covered with deposits of 

 loess, which consists of a finely comminuted clay, generally porous, and 

 of course affording more free underground circulation for moisture 

 and fertilizers, so necessary for the proper nourishment of the plant. 

 In South Missouri the soils are all based on disintegrated material from 

 adjacent and underlying rocks. There is more included gravel and the 

 drainage is consequently better. In North Missouri, where the drift 

 chiefly forms the base of the soil, the soils are of transportation and 

 have been borne from a long distance. 



Columbia, Mo., November, 1889. 



After another piece of music by the Glee club of Lebanon, the fol- 

 lowing was read : 



THE CULTIVATION OF FLOWERS OF THE GARDEN. 



MRS. W. H. OWENS, LEBANON. 



From the beginning of the history of the earth there has been the 

 history of the garden with it, and the love of gardens seems to be a 

 part of the affection of most of us, like the love of all other lovely 

 things. 



Whenever the prophets, for example, wanted figures to illustrate 

 the uttermost of blessing and beauty, they were wont to use the gar- 

 den for their similes. "And their souls," said Jeremiah, "shall be as a 

 watered garden, and they shall not sorrow any more:" while Isaiah 

 makes the promise, "and thou shalt be like a watered garden and like 

 a spring of water, whose waters fail not" — as if promise could no 

 further go." 



Nor did the poets of old time forget them. And was not half the 

 beauty of Babylon and the forgotten cities made by the architects who 

 hung their very roofs with gardens 1 



How much they thought of gardens in those old times when the 

 song of songs was sung. "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates 

 with pleasant fruits, camphor with spikenard, spikenard and saffron." 



In fact the song of songs would be as badly off without a garden 

 as "Paradise Lost" itself would be, or as "Paradise Eegained" instead. 

 Put, precious as gardens were in those long gone days, in those hot 

 countries with their bare hill-tops and arid plains, they are no less 

 pleasant to-day, and in our own temperate regions. 



There is no one who owns a house but longs for a bit of land that 

 shall be attached to it ; and few are there, even among the crowded 



