STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. T5 



from injury by a low stone coping, stands directly in front of the gateway in the 

 center of tlie carriage road. Driving around this striking ornament you enter the 

 grounds and hehold with wonder the fine effect produced by a tasteful judicious 

 arrangement of native shrubs and making the beautifully kept lawn glorified by a 

 bed of brilliant blossoms, the whole scene is so enchanting that you involuntarily 

 exclaim, "charming, exquisite," and teel that j'our a?sthetic taste is fully met and 

 that you are taking in a picture so perfect, so restful, that even when vacation is 

 over, and toil comes again, memory will retain it and it will become to you a peace- 

 ful oasis, where vour overworked mind may find rest and refreshment. 



All this is in marked contrast to the usual stiffness and monotony in the decora- 

 tion of grounds which costs so much money, and yet does not satisfy the eye of a 

 true lover of the beautiful. 



It is plain that the point aimed at in these remarks, is that we are neglecting 

 the beauties so lavishly bestowed upon us by nature, and reaching out after exo- 

 tics and rare things at great expense of time, money and anxiety, while half the 

 outlaj' properly used in cultivating what is ready to our hand, would make our 

 grounds a joy and praise throughout the land. 



We have great reason to hope and believe thut the testhetic craze over which we 

 all laugh so heartily will have the effect to do away, in a great measure, with the 

 artificial and ungraceful in our dress, and furniture, and lawn decorations, and in- 

 troduce in its stead something really and instrinsically beautiful in its appropriate- 

 ness to the place and uses for which it is designed. 



FERNS. 



I have chosen this subject, not because I know much about ferns, but because I 

 love them, and think that of all the l)eautiful delicate things that God has made to 

 gratify our sesthetic tastes, they are the most exquisite, and because I would have 

 others love and appreciate them. A few years ago, while on a long visit to that 

 beautiful kingdom in the blue Pacific, whose "islands lift their fronded palms in 

 air," I saw ferns everywhere, and was told that there were to be found in that 

 country one hundred and fifty varieties of this graceful family. From the great 

 tree fern, the stalk or trunk of which is as large as a man's leg, and from which 

 the natives procure a soft silky substance with which they fill their beds and pil- 

 lows, to the delicate Asplenium AfuUitectum or lace fern and the diminutive Trich- 

 ornanes. In the valleys, on the mountain sides, down in the craters of the spent 

 volcanoes ; lifting high their plumy tops in the flower borders of beautiful lawns ; 

 or grouped together in elegant grotto ferneries as the central ornament of highly 

 cultivated grounds, everywhere, and all the year round, these feathery beauties, 

 personification of grace and delicate loveliness, can be seen and enjoyed in that 

 paradise of beauty, the kingdom of Hawaii. I noticed wth great interest the large 

 birds- nest fern, with its great lanceolate leaves growing in a perfect circle, enclos- 

 ing and keeping from harm the tiny leaves curled and nestled in the center, like, 

 little callow birds, the Nephrodium latifrons, with its yellow-brown fruit so regu- 

 larly placed around the edge of the leaf as to simulate very perfectly diminutive 

 buttons on the trimming of a lady'sdress, the Trichomanes meifnlinm, so like a perfect 

 little tree, and the graceful Cystopteris fraqilis, so aptly representing refined gen- 

 tility. Then there were the endless varieties of Asplenium much of the year, heavy 

 with l)rown fruit, as the spores of the fern are called ; the Polypodium: the pretty 



