STATE HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 183 



al department. Mrs. Comstock prepared several drawings for his 

 last report. This list might be continued almost indefinitely. 



Nature may be called the great mother. By her grains and 

 fruits, all live. In her genial presence, any one may gain new hope 

 and strength. On her bosom each will finally sleep. 



'' But 0, thou gentle Summer ! 



If I greet thy flowers once more, 

 Bring me again the bouyancy 



Wherewith my soul should soar ! 

 Give me to hail thy sunshine 



With song and spirit free; 

 Or, in a purer air than this. 



May that next meeting be." 



A vote of thanks and an honorary life membership was tendered 

 to Mrs. Tilson, and she was cordially welcomed to membership by 

 the president, who followed in some remarks about the work of 

 women in horticulture, particularly in the raising of small fruits. 



The next paper read was 



THE GABDEN IN LITEBATUBE. 



By Oliver Gibes, Jr., of Lake City, Minh. 



Garden — An enclosed place for the cultivation of trees, plants and flowers. 



It speaks well for the rank of Horticulture as one of the employ- 

 ments of man that in the records of all civilized and semi-civilized 

 races, his greatest happiness in this world, and, in some of their 

 theologies, in the next, is depicted in connection, one way or 

 another, with the garden. 



In the story of the creation the writer, wishing to represent the 

 first pair in the most favorable situation for happiness, places them 

 in a garden. This shows that in that far-off, misty part, when this 

 story was written, the garden was then as now one of the bright- 

 est realities of life, as well as the poet's dream. And when mis- 

 fortune marks them for its own, in what shape does it come? 

 Consider it for a moment as it if were really a poem, a work of a 

 romancer's imagination, seeking to show the contrasts of joy and 

 sorrow in human life, while accouutiug for the origin of a race of 



