182 ANNUAL EEPOET. 



aud refilled will be inclined to remove thither. Their means and 

 society will promote the business and welfare of all. Many a com- 

 monplace village has been dressed in loveliness by a rural improve- 

 ment association. A writer for the Independent has instanced 

 Mishavvaka, Indiana, near South Bend, and Winnetka, a suburb 

 of Chicago, where ladies have been enlisted in this work as theirs 

 by nature and by right. 



Outdoor employment as a means to these various ends, health, 

 pleasure, culture, and gain, is comparatively inexpensive. Doctors' 

 fees and medicines make larger requisitions of purse and courage 

 than do rakes and water-pots. The possessor of shade trees and a 

 tasty yard, has, for years perhaps, the pleasing use of the same 

 things. It is not so with fine equipage and clothes, very soon worn 

 out or unfashionable. Theatres, operas, and journeys are costly 

 recreations. Garden work hardly admits of elaborate toilets, much 

 less demands them. Nature's pages, ever open, can well be sup- 

 plemented with books, but are in themselves a vast, universal 

 library. No book-cases have to be provided, nor worn bindings 

 repaired. A dollar's worth of seeds will sow a whole vegetable 

 garden. The capital required for beginning a poultry or bee busi- 

 ness, is ridiculously small. Twenty-five dollars spent for trees and 

 shrubs, may, in a few years, add hundreds of dollars to the value 

 of property. 



Nor is there any neglect of housework proposed. " These ought 

 ye to have done, and not to lea^e the other undone." It is believed 

 proper outdoor recreation will give such increased health and vigor, 

 that the same amount of indoor work can then be done in less 

 time. The experiment is worth trying. Change does much to 

 quicken preceptions and faculties. A man may find it profitable 

 in more ways than one, to provide extra help in the kitchen. 



If fashion and fame have weight with women, they ought to be 

 reminded that Queen Victoria often attends the meetings of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society. Mrs. Stowe's snccessful and famous 

 orange grove has done much to interest people in Florida. She 

 took a very active part in arranging and furnishing exhibits for 

 the Horticultural Fair, at Jacksonville, in 1877. Bayard Taylor's 

 mother last year won the first prize offered by the Woman's Asso- 

 ciation for the promotion of silk culture. Miss Youmans is author 

 of a standard botanical treatise. Mrs. Treat writes for the first 

 magazine of the land, on those special and rare phases of plant and 

 insect life with which she is so familiar. Miss Murtfeldt is one assist 

 ant of the national commissioner of agriculture, in his entomologic 



