WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 313 



trade cannot reasonably be expected to grow stock from which there 

 is no justifying demand. Hold out a profitable thing and popular edu- 

 cation will catch on quite freely, but talk of things beautiful and re- 

 fined and trade will slack off perceptibly. 



The same might perhaps be the case if I should attempt to speak 

 of the graceful and charming combinations, harmonious and contrasted 

 in which our forest trees have grown up by accident, as it were, yet 

 still as factors in the designing hand of nature, how charming are na- 

 ture's modes of design, yet how little noticed and imitated in our 

 attempts at ornamentation of homesteads of refined ond educated peo- 

 ple. Well may we say in this connection, God made the country, man 

 the town. 



ORNAMENTALS. 



BY M. W. SEARL, LEBANON, MO. 



Not long since, I was informed that I had been set apart for the 

 production of a "paper" on this occasion. The honor was one for 

 which I had no aspirations. My reason for this, with the probable value 

 of this paper, may be illustrated by an incident connected with my first 

 appearance as a horticulturist. In February, 1883, as some present will 

 remember, the annual meeting of the horticultural society of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley was held in the city of New Orleans. 



The idea of a pleasant excursion at a cheap rate was tempting. I 

 procured a membership and joined the Missouri contingent for the trip 

 to the Cfesent City. Among the gentlemen whose acquaintance it was 

 my pleasure to form at this time was Mr. E. T. Hollister, of St. Louis, 

 who, on several of these occasions, has sought to impress upon horticul- 

 turists the impropriety of placing the finest berries and most lucious 

 peaches altogether on top of the baskets. Well, Bro. Hollister was the 

 correspondent of a paper somewhere away down in the cane brakes of 

 Arkansas, and in writing up the excursion, stated that Southwest Mis- 

 souri was represented by that eminent horticulturist, M. W. Searle, who 

 did not raise any fruit, but could tell the best wolf story of any one in 

 the crowd. Now, the first part of the statement was very nearly solid 

 fact, but for a long time I could not recall the wolf story. I finally 



