188 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Coming as from out of space itself, from the very bosom of the lonc^ 

 the wild blue sea, as we have neared the mouth of some of the great riv- 

 ers, we have met the changed waters freighted with the materia) brought 

 from above, out of which to build additions to the world; and as we sailed 

 over the deposits where some day will be people and nations, I knew that 

 the little leaf had its full peculiar share in all that building. 



What a country will be, some day, where now the Amazon is bring- 

 ing from the slopes of the Andes the products of the rocks and from the 

 vastest forests and prairies of the world its immense load of decayed and 

 decaying vegetation, mixing them on the road and distributing them 

 over a wide spread area of sea bottom. If it were not for the work the 

 leaves are doing all over half a continent, that deposit would be a desert 

 of the future. 



Well might Missouri be called the State of many trees and of most 

 beautiful foliage. Look carefully next season at the leaves of our wild 

 woods. It is easy to tell, by their leaves, any of the oaks from any of 

 the elms, to know any ash from any maple, or the locusts from the lin- 

 dens. Oui native trees are nearly all seedlings. But among these seed- 

 lings of any one kind, there is a literally endless varying. See the very 

 plain differences between the size, form and color of the foliage of indi- 

 viduals among the elms and the oaks. 



Among the thousands of millions of the human race, no two are so 

 alike but they' can be told apart. The fact is wonderful ; but consider 

 how very much greater is the number of the leaves on the trees in our 

 woods, and yet on any of our forest trees no two full grown leaves can 

 be found but yourself or your neighbor with the best mechanical eye and 

 the finest eye for -color can tell directly which is which of the two. 

 If you doubt this, try it next summer. 



Consider the number of different species and varieties. Remember 

 the endless varying of individuals, the countless number of the trees and 

 of the leaves on each tree. Compare the leaves that grow on the same 

 tree, and you will have some sense of the infinite variety. 



The most skilled expert in colors, who handles the finest goods in 

 any establishment in New York City, would find himself at sea among 

 the endless shades of the greens of the oak trees in a Missouri grove, and 

 when the myriad variations of the autumn colors have come, he would be 

 far worse lost than before. 



Add to these, our own trees, the evergreens that are already proved 

 for our State, and any and every day in the year may be made to show 

 much of the beauty of the leaves ; and not alone for beauty, either, for 



