552 



HORTICULTURE 



October 17, 1914 



MISSION OF BEAUTY. 



RiTiil l).v C. S. narrison before American 

 Peony Society in Chicago. 



(Continued from page 4Q3) 



Beauty is the ultimate, the finish 

 or all things. Your apple orchard is 

 a flower garden in spring time and 

 more beautiful in the fall when the 

 ripened and fragrant fruit done up in 

 red and gold peers from its leafy cov- 

 erts. Wlien God produced the best — 

 the strawberry, he was not satisfied 

 simply to minister to the taste. He 

 wraps it up in a tissue of beauty no 

 brush can reproduce. When he fin- 

 ished the various regions of the earth 

 He spread His beauty over them. The 

 great Sahara, though a vast reach of 

 desolation is often adorned with 

 matchless beauty. The morning is 

 ushered in mantled in glory. The 

 gates of the evening are painted with 

 n-olten gems with exquisite skill. 

 There is a play of varying tints and 

 colors on mountain, hill and plain. 

 Sometimes a weird and mysterious 

 light is spread over the sands so you 

 seem walking on floors of gold. So 

 delightful and inspiring are these des- 

 ert scenes the Arabs call the Sahara 

 the Garden of Allah. In our own land 

 we have vast desolations which are 

 called the Painted Desert. There are 

 surprises of beauty awaiting you on 

 every hand. There are petrified for- 

 ests, hills, mountains and plains over 

 which the clouds cast their exquisite 

 shadings and tintings, transforming 

 sands and rocks into gardens of 

 radiancy. In the vast tundras of the 

 North are fields of flowers of millions 

 of acres. Even the Arctic night is 

 brilliant with those moving pictures 

 of flashing splendor. In the Tropics 

 what treasures of loveliness. There 

 are the exotics which embellish our 

 greenhouses. There are the famous 

 orchids for which men have laid down 

 their lives. All through our North- 

 land how entrancing were our forests. 

 In the Kast the kalmias, azaleas and 

 rhododendrons. In the West the 

 viburnums, and hosts of ornamen- 

 tals. In the mountains the most 

 beautiful trees on earth held in re- 

 serve for the supremest adornment. 

 Even the oceans are not forgotten. 

 The floors of the sea are embellished 

 with surpassing loveliness. In the 

 bay of the Catalina Island people go 

 out in boats with glass bottoms so 

 they can look into the deep where 

 sea flowers are at their best. Some of 

 you have heard of that wonderful 

 feather of the Burmuda seas. The 

 young man, William Phips, heard of a 

 Spanish vessel bearing enormous 

 wealth which struck a reef and went 

 down. Phips saw one of the survivors 

 50 years after and determined to find 

 the vessel. What a task, worse than 

 finding a needle in a hay stack. But 

 he went to England and secured a 

 man-of-war and went on his quest of 

 finding a vessel in a vast ocean. He 

 anchored in that southern sea and 

 sent a crew in a great canoe. The 

 men were despondent. What show 

 had they of finding a ship lost 50 

 years ago? One of the men looking 

 down saw an immense sea feather, the 

 largest ever seen. They sent an In- 

 dian diver down to tear it loose. He 

 came up with bulging eyes. "Wliat 

 great guns there was down there." 

 They found the sunken ship guarded 

 by that sea feather. They took from 



the vessel 300,000 pounds in gold, 

 silver and jewels. The young man 

 was knighted and afterwards ap- 

 pointed Governor of Massachusetts. 



God has neglected no part of the 

 earth. There is adornment of some 

 kind even for the desolations. Who 

 can describe the splendor of our 

 mountains. What a play of light and 

 shade when the clouds are shimmer- 

 ing over hill and plain. Often in my 

 summer cottage the clouds would 

 come over the summit of Nebe and 

 come down like a flock of sheep to 

 drive away my weariness by their re- 

 viving presence. One time I was in 

 a valley hemmed in by the mountains 

 and the clouds spread over it with 

 fringes resting on the summits. It 

 was like a vast umbrella and over it 

 all shone a mysterious light so that 

 it glowed like a vast opal. It was 

 one of the most resplendent scenes I 

 ever beheld. 



Our Slogan Is "Beauty Is Wealth." 

 There are Eldorados and Golcondas 

 in the fields of floriculture and hori- 

 ticulture as well as the mineral king- 

 dom. I stood by the original Con- 

 cord grape-vine in that quiet village 

 where it was born and could 

 but say "You grand old mother, 

 you little know your worth or 

 realize what you have done. Think 

 of the trainloads on trainloads of 

 fruit which have gone from your 

 branches. You have been worth mil- 

 lions." Think of the discoveries in 

 fruits. The Wealthy. Grimes Golden, 

 Jonathan and Delicious and others 

 which have come to reward the toil of 

 the orchardist. These present suc- 

 cesses are the promises of future dis- 

 coveries. It seems to be a law of na- 

 ture that the nearer a plant is to the 

 original the greater the tendency to 

 revert. Removed as far as pos- 

 sible from its primal parentage the 

 greater the tendency to break out into 

 a wild abandon of loveliness. Take 

 the original single dahlia. What has 

 been the results of the thousands of 

 efforts for its improvement? So that 

 at present we have several distinct 

 species so divergent their own mother 

 would not know them. The carnation 

 was a demure and humble little 

 flower but what changes have been 

 made so that she now stands out in 

 her queenly beauty. The phlox was 

 like a wild Indian maiden, homely and 

 hardy. But in the hands of the skilled 

 florist of Europe she comes back to 

 us as a princess fit to adorn the 

 courts of kings. The canna was an 

 insignificant flower mostly prized for 

 its foliage, but by skill and patience, 

 one man making 40,000 crosses, we 

 now have a queen among our flowers. 

 The single flower is the product of 

 nature, the double flower the pro- 

 duct of nature and art, joint vic- 

 tory of God and man. What gains 

 have been made in the peony. 3000 

 named sorts and more to follow. The 

 new creations give promise of ulti- 

 mate successes. What a scene of 

 splendor a field In bloom presents, 

 billows of fragrance floating there 

 until you seem walking in Elysium. 

 There is a carpet for the touch of 

 angels' feet. And there is the coming 

 flower, the iris. "Oh nothing but the 

 flag," cries prejudice, "that grew in 

 the swamps." Sooner or later we are 

 going to drag jieople away from the 

 swamps and show them the grandest 



family of flowers that God has yet 

 given to mortals, a continuous bloom 

 which glorifies two months of the 

 year, reaching from the tiny and 

 brave fumila to the tall giant which 

 brings up the rear. What superb 

 blooms, with garments woven from 

 the sunset and rainbow, combining 

 all the beauty of sky and earth. Many 

 of them have a delicious fragrance 

 and some have a radiant and glisten- 

 ing reflex like that of the richest 

 silk. New creations are coming fast. 

 There are some of the newer sorts of 

 immense flowers and there is a new 

 one which grows from 5 to 6 feet tall. 

 There should be a united campaign 

 of publicity to push this royal flower 

 to the front where it belongs. We 

 want a united effort at publicity. Give 

 the same attention to flowers that 

 is now given to fowls and animals 

 and you will glorify the earth. 

 Among the Egyptians the cat was dei- 

 fied. With us it is the hen. In India 

 they had the sacred bull and now we 

 have the sacred cow which gives her 

 1000 pounds of butter a year. Thou- 

 sands should be expended to proclaim 

 the value of our ornamentals. Here 

 we stand on fields won by others and 

 it is our provence to follow up their 

 successes. Pleasure and cash invite 

 you. Grand old Festiva maxima has 

 been worth over a million. A carna- 

 tion sold for a fabulous sum and that 

 was the beginning of its value. How 

 much is now invested in flowers and 

 new greenhouses going up all the time. 



What of the future? We spend 

 most of our time over there. We 

 do not get through with our work 

 down here. Heaven is more than a 

 divan and a song — a loafing place 

 with a hallelujah attachment. "My 

 Father worketh hitherto and I work." 

 Up there His servants serve Him 

 night and day. This world of ours 

 has about 80 constituents. Nearly 

 half of them have been thrown down 

 to us by these heavenly tramps, the 

 meteors. The spectroscope tells us 

 what is burning in the distant suns. 



When we stand on the margin of 

 the glorified vastness of God and see 

 as God sees, with no diminution of ob- 

 jects in ratio to the distance and the 

 universe rises before us to give its 

 salutations, as Caanan rose to the 

 vision of Moses, then we shall feel 

 that we have come to our own and 

 the infinite within us touches the in- 

 finite beyond us. 



PERSONAL. 



Henry Gibson, formerly at Tuxedo 

 Park, N. Y., has taken the position of 

 gardener on the estate of Mr. Colgate 

 Hoyt at Oyster Bay, N. Y. 



Julius Koenig, City Forester of St. 

 Louis, went to Terre Haute, Ind., last 

 week and took upon himself a wife. 

 The lucky young lady was Miss O. E. 

 Miller. 



Hartford, Conn.— Spear & McManus, 

 No. 242 Asylum street, celebrated the 

 opening of the fall season on October 

 8, by giving roses to everybody who 

 would simply step inside the store, 

 where the roses were handed out. 

 This innovation met with instant suc- 

 cess, and before 10 o'clock in the 

 morning 5,000 roses had been given 

 away, and this continued all day. 



