STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 227 



and for the intelligence, enterprise and hospitality of its 

 people. Rochester has become the metropolis of the most 

 fertile and prosperous county of this State. But nothing 

 brings up to me more pleasing associations and hallowed 

 memories than the fact that this city is the first in the State 

 where any organized and systematic efforts were inade in horti- 

 culture, and that it was here that the Minnesota State Horticul- 

 tural Society had its birth, and that here I have met with her 

 people at six State fairs and one Southern Minnesota fair and 

 exposition, where has been made the grandest horticultural ex- 

 hibits ever seen in the State of Minnnesota. We have assembled 

 together to-day to engage in the means to promote an art that is 

 suited to man's highest destiny. It is an art that is calculated to 

 afford the intellect abundant themes to which a patriarch's long 

 life might be devoted with increasing gladness, for it extends 

 above, around and beneath us; its beauties are without limit, its 

 varieties without end. There is no human science that is 

 so ample in its range, so attractive in its allurements; there is 

 no occupation of man that is so ennobling, or that brings him so 

 intimately in connection with nature and nature's God. Its 

 votary has the wide world of beauty unfolded to his view as a 

 living landscape. Both as a science and as an art, horticul- 

 ture, if it be properly appreciated, is abundant in its resources. 

 It has numbered among its votaries the wisest, ablest and best 

 men of all ages and of every nation. They have gathered, trans 

 ferred naturalized and adapted to our uses whatever of earth's 

 products can please the eye, satisfy the appetite, or regale the 

 senses, or is of any use whatever in sustaining life or promoting 

 the happiness of man, and it is their enviable occupation to 

 'Mress and keep" them according to the divine command what 

 they have thus gathered and arranged. A boundless theme is 

 here presented. It is the application of the art. It is to sow 

 and plant, to prime and train, to transplant, to propagate by 

 grafting, cutting, layering and mulching; and connected with 

 these operations are remarkable phenomena that lead the mind 

 to pleasing and elevating thoughts, for it may thus dwell on 

 many of the most interesting pages of the book of nature. An 

 art that is so abundant in its resources and that has occupied the 

 meditation of the learned for past ages is worthy of at least a 

 little of our consideration. It is the art that means gardening 

 of every kind the world over, gardening by the orchardist, the 

 vineyardist, the florist, and the tree-planter; it includes the 



