130 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



"What an ample field for the professional florist or the amateur, 

 and how truly worthy their labor, enthusiasm and love ! 

 Flowers ! beautiful flowers ! We thank our Heavenly Father 

 that they are everywhere, and that all may love them and learn 

 from them the sweet lessons that 



" Will lead us from earth's fragrant sod 

 To hope and holiness and God." 



Like the gentle dew, their influence falls upon all, of every 

 age and station. "We find them in the deep forest, and on the 

 dusty road, in the parlor and in the garden, and in every spot 

 on this wide earth consecrated by human joy or sorrow. 



" Bring flowers ! They are springing in wood and vale, 

 Their breath floats out on the southern gale. 

 Bring flowei's to strew in the conqueror's path, 

 He hath shaken thrones with his stormy wrath ! 

 Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell, 

 They have tales of the joyous woods to tell, 

 And a dream of his youth — bring flowers, wild flowei's. 

 Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear, 

 They were born to blush in her shining hair. 

 She is leaving her home — bring flowers, fair flowers. 

 Bring flowers, pale flowers, o'er the bier to shed 

 A crown for the brow of the sainted dead ! 

 They are love's last gift — bring ye flowers, pale flowers ! 

 Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer, 

 They are nature's ofi"ering, their place is there ! 

 They break forth in glory — bring flowers, bright flowers ! " 



PLYMOUTH, 



From the Report of the Committee. 

 1\\ the beginning plants lived, blossomed, and passed away, 

 leaving their imperishable records on the rocks to demonstrate 

 their existence, probably a million of years before man was 

 created. Oeology teaches us that for ages vegetation only 

 lived to prepare minerals and food for our use. Burning with 

 heat, saturated with moisture, and charged with deleterious 

 gases, as yet the world was in no condition to receive man, and 

 it was by the agency of plants that these apparently insuperable 

 objections were to be removed. Not in the twinkling of an eye, 

 but by immutable laws working for ages, was the result to be 



