ANNUAL MEETING AT NEVADA. 175 



but I hazard nothing in saying that while thirty years have been 

 marching along with trim precision into the realms of the past, patient 

 observation and investigation have made those, who are before me, 

 familiar with many of nature's wonderful processes that were not 

 dreamed of when your society was first formed. Yet, I doubt not, you 

 come to this meeting with more questions, and with a greater anxiety 

 for information than ever before. As the living forest trees send their 

 thousands of rootlets into the crevices of the rocks, as well as into the 

 yielding soil, for the moisture and nutriment they must have, while their 

 thousands of leaves silently draw in the vital gases from the gentlest 

 breezes that moves them, so you, who are gathered within these walls 

 are quietly sending out the tendrils of memory and storing the mind 

 with food for thought, to the end that something may here be added to 

 the general fund of knowledge already garnered, and come a little nearer 

 to the solution of some of those Horticultural mysteries that now con- 

 front you. 



I understand that Horticulture means something more to-day than 

 the ordinary definition of the dictionary. It is not merely the cultivat- 

 ing of gardens. Your inquiries and discussions will relate to the grow- 

 ing of fruits and flowers, and vegetables, and trees for ornament and 

 use, and the arrangement of them so as to produce pleasing landscape 

 effects. Horticulture is both an art and a science. The observation and 

 experience of untold generations, from the day when the leaves of the 

 fig tree were fashioned into raiment, until these late times when the 

 product of an unsightly worm furnishes us with robes of gorgeous 

 beauty, has perfected us in the former ; while an acquaintance with the 

 laws of natural science has advanced us in the latter. The aim of Hor- 

 ticulture is to furnish man with pleasant surroundings and a palatable 

 and nutritious class of food. The great mass of our sustenance comes 

 from the vegetable kingdom. The sap, bark, leaf, flower and fruit, each 

 yields its portion. Man joins hands with the Maker, not only in the 

 production of vegetables, fruits, flowers and trees, but in their improve- 

 ment in flavor, fragrance, size and beauty. 



The horticulturist must know something of the natural sciences. 

 From botany he learns that the earth produces more than a hundred 

 thousand species of plants, the most of them in some way serviceable 

 to man. Knowing something of the general laws, of their classification 

 and structure you are able to judge with a considerable degree of cer- 

 tainty as to their properties, and may by observation and study be en- 

 abled to add to the number of plants now classed as useful. 



