104 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



on to the next generation. So by this law which Mr. Darwin 

 has so completely explained, this law of the survival of the 

 fittest, those plants which developed hardness survived in the 

 great processes of creation. 



This "Survival of the Fittest," just as when the gardener 

 prunes off" and digs out what he does not want to grow and 

 thrive, cultivated the hard, strong, inedible plants. 



Now let us turn, having in view that process, having in mind 

 that earliest way of gardening before man was here to do it, 

 to the primitive mother rose. Of course, her main business 

 in life, for her life depended upon it, was to save herself and 

 her little ones, her seed, from being devoured by some huge 

 Mastodon or Mammoth, and to this end, by that same process 

 of the "Survival of the Fittest" she raised a standing army 

 100,000 strong ; her twigs gave up the function of bearing 

 fruit and took up defensive measures, became sharp and drove 

 off the huge creatures which would have made short work of 

 the mother plant. But for the thorns we would have, today, 

 no rose nor strawberry nor peach nor any of those other deli- 

 cious plants of the rose family. 



But the best remains to be told, and it is a little like the 

 story of our citizen soldiers, the story that we are ready to 

 duplicate today if need be. You remember how it happened 

 thirty years or more ago. Men of peace they were, those men 

 of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, of New England, and 

 all the North, men of peace they were ; but when the country 

 cried out to them for help, when the Union was in danger, then 

 those men of peace who hated war, who knew the joys of home 

 life, who loved the little ones and the wife, and clung to the 

 prosperity and the comforts of a peaceful home, those men of 

 peace laid aside their instruments of peace, took weapons in 

 their hands, and went forth to kill and to be killed, if need be. 

 We know the noble story of what they did, that as they went 

 100,000 strong from here up North, they went singing, "We 

 are coming, Father Abraham." They were going, if need be, 

 to death itself. But when the war was over, when the Union 

 was saved and the slaves free, then these same men who had 



