STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 57 



plete, but already embraces most of our native plants. Miss Fur- 

 bish is accorded the honor of being the first woman for whom a 

 plant has been technically named \_Pedicularis Furhislia], fu honor 

 in which every other Main'^ woman maj' proudly share. The object 

 of this paper is not to urge that we all become scientific botanists, 

 but that, by learning to read nature in her works, we shall all find a 

 secret of happiness in our own lives, and help to unfold it in the 

 lives of those for whose future we are responsible ; that parents and 

 teachers, by leading the children early to the pure and helpful study 

 •of flowers, will so preoccupy their minds that unrest and evil may 

 not so readily find a lodgment there ; that home shall alway? be 

 associated with the most beautiful things God has given us — the 

 flowers ; that by thus awakening their interest in all that pertains to 

 the culture and adornment of rural homes, this vexed question, 

 -"How shall we keep the children on the farm?" may find, if possible, 

 a more satisfactory solution. It is not desirable to keep them all 

 there, but it is desirable that they should love and cling to it. Piti- 

 ful, indeed, is this picture given us by a Scottish writer: ''There 

 are, in Scotland, ten thousand homes, once sweet and beautiful, each 

 a little paradise, of which there is no trace of the cottage, not even 

 the grassy mound that marked it, and the question naturally follows : 

 Where are the health} , laughing peasant boys and girls that such 

 homes bred and reared? They are sweltering and struggling for 

 existence in the toiuns and cities." The author further adds: '*I 

 am told this must be, that it is all the result of economic laws. But 

 I confess to a deepening conviction that it need not be, and that the 

 loss to the nation, as a whole, is vital, if not irreparable." Is there 

 not a like process going on in our own State? Are the boys and 

 girls encouraged to remain upon the farms as they should be? The 

 tendency to join the small farms to the large ones, and thus blot out 

 the homes and drive from our rural districts its most valuable popu- 

 lation, its small farmers with their families, is degenerating. Consult 

 the school records. Only two or three scholars now where often 

 thirty to forty bright, happj' bo3's and girls made music in the air for 

 miles around. This question is ivorthy the attention of a society 

 like this. Can you not, by the dissemination of knowledge and the 

 encouragement of fruit and flower culture, help to give necessar}' 

 stimulus to those busj' brains, and attract to these homes its richest 

 heritage, its boys and girls? Look the world over — where can be 

 found a more favored spot than our own State of Maine? Of all 



