STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 131 



to cut short the monopolies — feed the hungry and clothe the 

 naked — make free air and water, give to each enough land to 

 produce the needed comforts of life and no one allowed to hold 

 more. The God of creation gave the eartn a free gift to man, and 

 made a curse to follow him who usurped more than his share, as 

 well as to him who suffered himself to be robbed of his natural 

 •dues. And in their wake war, pestilence and death are ever sure 

 to follow, in which all classes suffer. 



That the mind of man controls the elements, facts are too numer- 

 ous to admit of a question, for when any great excitement sways 

 any considerable portion of earth's people, the elements take 

 form, as is often noticeable about the time of exciting presidential 

 elections, and when Washington's army lay at Valley Forge was 

 had the coldest winter known in America up to that date, and not 

 repeated until Charlestown was besieged during the rebellion; 

 and when Charles Twelfth invaded Russia they had the hardest 

 winter up to that date and not repeated until the winter Bona- 

 parte burned Moscow; and again during the great French revolu- 

 tion of 1792-3, they had the hardest winter up to that date, and not 

 repeated until Paris was besieged b3^ the Germans, and so run facts 

 in all ages and nations. And accordingly a greedy, grasping, selfish 

 national mind will cut short the farm crop per acre, and in no 

 great space of time turn the most fertile lands to barren wastes. 

 Examples to the point bedot all times, and were facts well under- 

 stood thousands of years ago, is evident from many ancient 

 writers, who gave as warning to evil doers, if they did not relent, 

 that all goodly things would pass from them, and that on the other 

 hand, that peace and quiet would cause the deserts to become 

 fertile and blossom as the rose. No doubt those ancients founded 

 their conclusions on the data of facts, and since their day, facts to 

 the point loom up in profusion on the four quarters of the globe. 

 Arabia was once renowned for her fertile plains, her balmy breezes, 

 and vast agricultural products, with a population variously esti- 

 mated at from 10 to 100 millions, but now those plains are vast des- 

 ert wastes swept by fearful storms, and only roamed over by bands of 

 marauding thieves, the remnant of the well-to-do millions, as bar- 

 ren in mind as the sands over which they roam. But while power 

 yet remained, their greed and self aggrandizement induced them 

 to make conquests of other lands, and first to fall a prey to their 

 greed were Palestine and Asia Minor, the then garden spots of the 

 world, but now barren wastes. Yet not content, ov^r into Egypt 

 they went, then a nation of forty millions, now less than four 



