gth March, A. D. 1899. 



ESSAY 



BY 



ABEL F. STEVENS, Wellesley, Mass. 



Theme:— New Methods in Horlicidlure. 



Horticulture, the earliest employment of man, is also one 

 of the most attractive. It is the poetry of agriculture ! A 

 taste for this delightful vocation is almost universal in this 

 country. That garden in which Adam and Eve were placed 

 was the primitive paradise ; and to this day a tastefully arranged 

 and judiciously planted garden, with fragrant flowers and deli- 

 cious fruits, has still lingering about it many of the charms we 

 are wont to attribute to the original Eden. And to every true 

 lover of horticulture it seems, in the fulness of its summer 

 benuty and autumnal fruitage, to be indeed almost a " Paradise 

 Regained." 



Among the most gratifying evidences of progress in horticul- 

 ture, are the new methods in culture and the numerous acquisi- 

 tions of new and valuable varieties of fruits, by which the 

 season is greatly prolonged by the accessions of earlier and 

 later varieties, by the better knowledge in the keeping and pack- 

 ing of fruits, and the facilities of transportation. Our markets 

 and tables are now supplied with delicious fruits throughout the 

 entire year, with such a variety as no other nation can produce ! 

 The progress of invention, the developments of science, and the 

 spur of enterprise are indeed grand in other departments of 

 industry, but in all this the fruit culture of our own dear State 

 will have its full share. The great need of our horticulture 

 today, in all of its departments, is "Brains"; for the practi- 

 cal progressive cultivator who is up-to-date must be a man of 



