176 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Chemistry will remind you that common honesty pays ; that what 

 you take from the soil must be returned or something will suffer. 



This science may enable you to discover fertilizers, but can, beyond 

 these things, do little more for you. You may observe and encourage 

 its mysterious processes in vegetable life, but give it a "magazine of pure 

 elements and it cannot furnish you a single grain of starch, nor a crystal 

 of sugar, nor anything that can be a substitute for them. The plants 

 are the only chemists that can take up these inorganic materials and in 

 the wonderful laboratory of their living tissues mould them into forms 

 to support animal life." 



From entomology you may learn something of insect life and habits 

 that may relieve you from their depredations. So great is the injury 

 done to crops in this country every year by these destroyers, that it has 

 been said that if a foreign nation should, in the same time, injure us one 

 twentieth part as much, our army and navy would be speedily called into 

 requisition to demand and obtain satisfaction. As it is, we are well nigh 

 helpless, our only resource being to ask the zoologist to turn loose the 

 insectivorous birds — those flying guards — the only natural protectors 

 from this foe, and to insist upon the passage of laws that will prevent 

 killing of them in wanton sport. 



He who ernestly and ambitiously addresses himself to the study of 

 Horticulture, will find an almost illimitable field before him. He must 

 know some thing of all these sciences I have mentioned. He must look 

 with microscopic power into the secret laboratory of vegetable life. He 

 will not pass a strange leaf without noticing its veining. The beetle 

 with its drowsy hum and the crawling worm in his path will have an at- 

 traction for him. He ought to possess, to some extent, the qualities of 

 mind which enabled Newton to see in the prismatic colors of a trembling 

 soap-bubble, evidences of a great law. 



There is a very noticeable disposition on the part of young men and 

 women of this day to avoid agricultural pursuits. They are pushing 

 toward the cities with trade, mechanical pursuits, the learned profes- 

 sions, salaried positions, insignificant clerkships — into anything that 

 will keep them off the farm. The moderate education which most of 

 them receive, creates a desire for employments that will enable them to 

 mix brain with muscle, and this condition of affairs must continue until 

 a higher and better education reveals that there is a science in 

 farming ; that this industry ought to awaken thought and develop 

 the strongest powers of the mind. It must be shown that true learn- 

 ing is not hidden within the covers of a printed book, but that " we 



