RURAL LIFE. 



107 



it Into its head to speak ! Would not the ef- 

 fect upon the audience be far more agreeable 

 and instructive. This severe abstract address 

 to the eye and the imagination, may do for 

 poets and artists, but not for such realists 

 and practical demonstrators as most horticul- 

 turists are. Suppose, for instance, that com- 

 petent committees are appointed sometime 

 before the exhibition, who shall carefully scan 

 the whole collection, and label, with the au- 

 thoritative stamp of the society, a dozen — 

 more or less — varieties of each class of fruits, 

 *' good," " very good," " besi ;" (the now es- 

 tablished classification of American Pomolo- 

 gy,) letting it be understood that all sorts not 

 so labelled were either not sufficiently proved, 

 or if proved, were of no value for the palate. 

 Suppose that whenever the committee should 

 be satisfied that any remarkably fine objects 

 in exhibition had been raised by a method of 

 decided merit, not generally known, that such 

 method should be very concisely stated in 

 printed letters on a card accompanying the 

 specimens. Suppose that a crop of vegeta- 

 bles, raised upon common soil, which owed its 

 superior fertility solely to having been made 

 deep, should have stamped upon the label the 

 words — " grown in trenched soiL" Suppose 

 the exhibitor of a certain fruit, which he is 

 able to produce in abundance and with faci- 

 lity, should be (willingly) cross-questioned till 

 the secret should be ascertained to lie in his 

 soil, or in paving under his trees, or in using 



lime as a manure, etc., and such fact or facts 

 should be concisely and legibly expressed and 

 exhibited along with the fruit ; let us suppose 

 such an exhibition, where valuable informa- 

 tion should be made public in this manner, 

 where, in short, the society should not only 

 make its usual display, but disseminate "use- 

 ful knowledge," and we think it cannot be 

 denied that the utility of such an institution 

 would soon be felt to be far wider and deeper 

 than any existing at the present moment in 

 the United States. 



"We offer these remarks as suggestions only, 

 to the officers of the different societies. It is 

 easy to see that, a beginning once made in 

 this direction, a new system would arise, and 

 new plans of direction would be formed, that 

 would soon lead directly to fresh experiments 

 and more careful and scientific modes of cul- 

 ture. The advantage to the progress of hor- 

 ticulture would be two-fold. First, in every 

 society cultivators would spring up who would 

 exhibit remarkable specimens, which would be 

 doubly instructive as the result of well di- 

 rected skill, and not of chance, (as at present ;) 

 and second, there would be a gradual record 

 and accumulation of facts in each society, 

 which, when made public, would tend vastly to 

 the progress of the art all over the Union ; since 

 every art, the progress in which depends on ex- 

 perimental knowledge, can make but little real 

 advance, while the knowledge of successful 

 experiments is confined to a few practitioners. 



RANDOM THOUGHTS ON RURAL LIFE. 



BY C. L. D., NEW-JERSEY 



I THINK it was Judge Parsons, of whom 

 the anecdote is told, that while waiting for 



man, and, in a few minutes' conversation, im- 

 parted to each so many useful hints in regard 



liis dinner at a country tavern, when on a 1 to his art, that when the two afterwards com- 

 journey, he strolled into a blacksmith's shop, pared notes respecting the stranger, each was 

 and from thence to that of some other trades- | lositive he must be a member of his particular 



