16 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



to the gi'eat store of herring or shad, and in the mellowed earth 

 they put one or more fish, and dropped the golden grain of maize ; 

 the Pilgrim saw its blades of tender green seek the light and shoot 

 upward with tropical vigor, color, and form. The grass grains 

 of the Old "World, waving in billow}' richness, were the tj^pes they 

 knew. Wheat, rye, and barlej-, ancient as our race, and making 

 the staff that has supported the toiling steps of ever}' generation 

 of men, were familiar to them. What must have been their sur- 

 prise when they saw this child of savage horticulture respond to 

 the ardent kisses of the sun, spread its broad leaves, exalt its 

 towering blossom, shed its fertilizing pollen, and ripen its prodi- 

 gal grain ! 



It was their wonder and their safet}' ; it was God's gift and 

 mercy that bj' it, upon these rugged shores, they might live, and 

 that the wanc\ering witness of his word should be preserved and 

 established, — a proof of his lasting love and watchful power. 



This bantling of the Indian squaw is now the king of all the 

 cereals ; whose field is a continent, and whose surplus loads the 

 boards of nations that would otherwise perish. This ver}' season 

 the American farmers have raised in ninety days eighteen hundred 

 millions of bushels upon lauds that stretch from the sandy shores 

 of Plj^mouth to the gate of the Pacific, and from where the cool 

 streams leap to the untempered waters of the North Atlantic to 

 the turbid tide of might}" rivers dark rolling to the Southern Gulf. 



The maize was the only useful plant of the family of grasses 

 that the English settlers found in their new home. The tame 

 grasses of Europe that now wave in our meadows, the cereals, 

 roots, and fruits of civilized life, had to be carefully introduced, 

 supported, and cultivated, to form the wide basis of our present 

 agriculture and horticulture. 



The native flora of New England was not sufficient for the sup- 

 port of man. There was game in the forest, and fish in the streams 

 and waters of the coast; but timber, ice, and rocks were the sole 

 productions of the shore. Miiy I not say that there was not a wild 

 plant of all our region that has ever been cultivated into value, 

 from the time of its discovery until now? It may perhaps be 

 proper to except several small fruits, and also to speak of the sugar 

 maple, one of the most beautiful of our native trees, readily trans- 

 planted or raised from seed. It is of vigorous growth, its foliage 

 clean and rich in summer, and when ripened in autumn gorgeous 

 in varied colors. While yet the snow-drifts lie heavy in the wood, 



