MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 87 
on the low ground. Banking up around the trees with earth 
in the fall before it freezes is a great protection to them 
through the winter. I have learned that by practical ex- 
perience. Would advise those who want orchards for profit 
not to set too many varieties, but take pains in selecting hardy 
varieties, and plant largely of those. 
The Haas and Walbridge should have a fair test. Saxton, I 
think, will stand in all ordinary winters. 
One cannot expect to be successful in getting an orchard 
without he gives it proper attention. And I don’t know why 
it is not for the farmer’s interest to spend a portion of his 
time in horticultural improvements as well as in making other 
improvements. 
- Faith and works go together. If one has faith that he can 
grow an orchard, and goes to work to do it, he is pretty sure 
to meet with success. 
FLOWERS. 
BY J. S. HARRIS, LA CRESCENT. 
Sin essay read before the State Horticultural Society, at the summer 
meeting held in Minneapolis, July 4th, 1872. 
Lapies AND GENTLEMEN :—Although I have been an enthu- 
siastic lover of flowers from my earliest childhood, and fully 
realize that earth possesses no greater charms than a little 
flower garden all one’s own, I feel very forcibly my inability 
to do anything like justice to a subject which the sweetest of 
poets have lauded to the skies and the ablest pens have essayed 
upou—a subject which points us back to a “ Paradise Lost” 
and urges us a Paradise to regain. 
Floriculture shuts out the darkness of sin and lifts the veil 
to refreshing bowers, luxurious verdure, pure crystal streams 
and breezes that waft out upon a fallen world the sweets of 
fragrance, the spices of life. 
The cultivation of flowers, whether it be the tiny plant in 
the cracked cup of the poor man’s cottage or the stately 
palm, or other tropical glories in palatial gardens and crystal 
palaces, is wielding an influence to elevate the human race 
which no one to-night can tell, no pen describe. 
It is calculated to engage the intellect, and open fields of 
inexhaustible treasure which the longest life is far too short 
