468 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tion ; and he may thereby have been enabled to bear 

 away the prize for superiority from one whose garden 

 was a pattern of scientific cultivation, neatness, and 

 economy in management. The Society has, therefore, 

 by its committees, gone into the gardens of its members 

 and of others, and examined them as to the excellence 

 of cultivation, neatness in keeping, and economy in 

 management, and awarded its prizes for superiority in 

 these respects. 



But horticulture includes more than the finest fruits 

 and flowers and the neatest and most skilful cultivation. 

 " Horticulture in its most comprehensive sense," said 

 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop in his speech at the anni- 

 versary of the Society in 1848, "is emphatically the fine 

 art of common life. It is eminently a republican fine 

 art. It distributes its productions with equal hand to 

 the rich and the poor. Its implements may be wielded 

 by every arm, and its results appreciated by every eye. 

 It decorates the dwelling of the humblest laborer with 

 undoubted originals by the oldest masters, and places 

 within his daily view fruit pieces such as Van Huysum 

 never painted, and landscapes such as Poussin could 

 only copy." The daily sight of fine fruits and flowers 

 and vegetables must educate the taste, and inspire a love 

 for all that is beautiful in nature or art; and the Society 

 in its award of prizes for bouquets, baskets of flowers, 

 and floral designs, has done so much to promote a true 

 taste, that Boston may claim a position in advance of 

 any other city in the United -States in this respect. But 

 it is in landscape gardening that horticulture most truly 

 rises to the dignity of a fine art. The founders of the 

 Society did not lose sight of this branch of the art of 

 horticulture, and it was intended that the garden and 



