76 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



riculum poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, and in fact follows 

 closely the line of study of the English horticultural schools. There 

 are courses both of Horticulture and of landscape gardening at 

 Wellesley and Smith Colleges, but these are open only to the stu- 

 dents of these institutions. Each of the courses is a year's course, 

 the Wellesley course paying greater attention to landscape work 

 than does that at Smith College, where the aim is to give the student 

 a good foundation in Horticulture and a fund of knowledge from 

 which to draw in the superintending of her own estates. 



There is, undoubtedly, for the energetic woman with a taste and 

 liking for this kind of work, an opening in this country. For those 

 who are in pursuit of commercial horticulture, such as florist's 

 work, fruit and vegetable raising, the opportunities seem rather 

 greater in the West, particularly in the far West, for there Horti- 

 culture has moved along with great strides and it is a country which 

 is still growing rapidly and therefore offers more to the early comer. 

 The climate and the soil conditions also assist materially. The 

 private estates in the West are still in such a rough state that the 

 demand for landscape gardening is very slight, although already 

 it begins to look as if that occupation would become profitable 

 there within a few years. At the present time there is much more 

 of an opening in this profession and less prejudice against the 

 practice of it by women than in the Eastern States. If a few 

 energetic women should go West and "talk it up" it would be 

 profitable to them and open the doors to others who might come 

 in a more practical capacity. One woman of my acquaintance 

 has been doing this in Portland, Oregon, but she feels that as far 

 as landscape work is concerned the time is not quite ripe there 

 and has recently gone to try her luck in California. 



Although I have spoken already of this, do not forget that no 

 woman should undertake any of these practical branches of Horti- 

 culture unless she has good health, business ability, and some 

 capital with which to start. To quote again from Mr. Robert 

 Manning's History of this Society, — "Horticulture is the perfection 

 of Agriculture and as population increases and with it the necessity 

 for more careful cultivation, we may expect that all the operations 

 of Agriculture will ultimately be performed with the precision, 

 nicety, and refinement of Horticulture until the whole world shall 



