PREFACE xxvii 



spirit and civic betterment, but it loses in originality and vitality and in 

 homefulness. 



Oue-third of our city and village improvement work is horticulture. 

 Another third is architecture ; and the other third is common cleanliness and 

 decency. We are gradually developing toward social community. All public 

 and quasi-public property belongs in a very real sense to every one of the 

 people who comes into relationship with it. It is your concern and mine how 

 the streets look, and what is the esthetic character of churchyards, highways, 

 railway property, open spaces, vacant lots. It is the work of the artist to 

 touch all these commonplaces into life ; but the horticulturist must furnish part 

 of the materials, and if he rises to his opportunities he himself will be in 

 some important sense an artist. 



As a teaching profession, horticulture has two great phases: it must teach 

 the things of the art and the craft ; it must aid in bringing the child into rela- 

 tions with its environment. In all these generations we have been training the 

 reflective and passive faculties. We shall now train also the creative and 

 active faculties. It is the development of the active and constructive faculties 

 that makes the farm boy so effective when he goes to the city. The coming 

 school will deal with live objects and real phenomena. It will not be confined 

 within walls. Growing plants will be prominent among these objects. The 

 child will be trained to use his hands, to plan and to reason from actual prob- 

 lems. Then he will be resourceful and will have power; for no man who 

 lacks power is an educated man even though he knows all languages and has 

 the finest academic manners. 



I have now suggested the three phases or sides of the field that we know 

 as horticulture: 



I. The biological or science side. 



(a) Physiolog}' of plants, in its broadest phases — relations to the place 

 iu which the plant grows and to the artificial conditions imposed 

 upon it. 

 (&) The modification of plants, — acclimatization, breeding, evolution. 



II. The affairs side. 



(a) The manipulation of plants, — grafting, pruning, training. 



(b) The rearing and sale of plants and plant products as a commercial 



enterprise. 



(c) The manufacture of certain plant products, — the canning, evapo- 



rating and similar industries. 



