Esthetics of Earth Culture. 



By Hexry L. Parker, Esq. 



Bead before the Worcester County Horticultural Society, March 3, A. D. 1881. 



The Arts may all be classed under two general heads — tlie 

 mechanical and the liberal or fine. The mechanical arts are 

 those which tend to create or improve the necessities, comforts 

 and conveniences of man. The liberal or fine arts are those 

 which tend to elevate or improve the moral and intellectual 

 qualities with utility as a secondary object. They are addressed 

 to the imagination and the feelings, and excite pleasurable 

 emotions by creations of the beautiful. 



From an early age gardening has been classed with Poetry, 

 Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, Music and the Drama, and 

 treated as a fine art. 



History demonstrates the fact that Agriculture is one of the 

 first agencies of civilization. The cultivation of the earth is 

 always a step preliminary to the cultivation of the arts and 

 sciences. Not one nomadic tribe ever yet became civilized until 

 first having fixed its habitations, enacted laws securing to each 

 individual the rights of property, and turned its attention to the 

 raising of annual crops instead of wandering from place to place 

 and gaining a precarious subsistence by hunting or upon its 

 flocks and herds. In fact such a roving life seems antagonistic 

 to civilization, as witness the Arab and Tartar tribes in whose 

 social and moral status centuries have made no improvement. 

 T^ot one idea of benefit to the world ever originated with them, 

 but when these tribes become once attached to the soil and com- 

 mence its cultivation they advance at once in the scale of civilized 

 life. 



Thus Greece and Italy were pioneers in the civilization of 

 Europe. And why ? Because they were the first to practice 

 Agriculture. The savage tribes which inundated Europe from 

 Western Asia became attracted by the fertile fields, genial 

 climate and pure skies of that loveliest of all lands — Italy. 

 Here their wanderings ceased. They substituted for their huts 

 and tents more permanent dwellings, began the culti'^ation of 

 the earth, and the result was an agriculture which in many 

 respects has not been surpassed in modern times. Fruit and 

 vegetables received their share of attention. Pliny speaks of 



