92 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1893. 



shrubs, vines, and plants, that we may hope to materially increase the 

 number of embellished homes in Massachusetts. 



Again, by encouraging the judicious decorating and planting of 

 school-yard borders (allowing ample play-ground), and of grounds 

 about post-otHces, railway stations, city and town halls, and public 

 buildings, where any decoration in this line is possible, we should be 

 taking a fouudation step towards the accomplishment of this desirable 

 end. Consider the number of eyes that would then see and minds 

 that would be led to think of the advantages of embellishiug grounds ; 

 and consider the large proportion of persons who would sooner or later 

 attempt to adapt to their own homes the suggested ideas. 



But to come more especially to the matter of how to secure our 

 trees, plants, and shrubs, how numerous do we find the phases of 

 this subject, when we think of the many beautiful and interesting 

 native specimeus that we find wherever we pass among the wild plan- 

 tations that the unseen hand of Nature has spread over the extensive 

 and varied surface of our country, indeed of our world, and which ex- 

 hibit to us from time to time newly-found specimens to be developed in 

 strength, beauty and popularity, by our students of landscape effect, 

 and of botany, and by our nurserymen, for home, and foreign, uses. 



Let all join in the attempt to realize valuable results in this line of 

 thought, in the ho[)e of broadening this field of work in an undertak- 

 ing aimed to secure the greatest general advancement in the line for 

 which our Horticultural Societies exist. 



So far as we thus aim to promote the introduction of our native speci- 

 mens into the landscape of foreign countries, we simply promote the 

 plan of action long since adopted by Horticulturists of some other 

 nations iu making exchanges with, and securing new varieties from, 

 other countries. 



All that can be done in this way results iu benefit to the home-coun- 

 try ; and, on the other hand, we can thank those abroad most heartily 

 for all they can do in a similar way, and urge that they will continue 

 their good work, not only that they may send us material results, but 

 that our people may be brought as near to their intelligent foreign 

 cousins in friendly business aud personal intercourse, as the underlying 

 interests of prosperity in the several nations of the world will justify. 

 We meet the thought, in this connection, as to what useful aud 

 educational machinery we can use to bring to light, aud popularize, 

 unknown and desirable plants and shrubs. Older countries than ours 

 give more instruction, iu primary schools, in botany, and like studies 

 more closely related to nature, than we do in the belief that while 



