166 MASSACHUSETTS HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BUSINESS MEETING. 



Saturday, March 24, 1888. 



An adjourned meeting of the Society was holden at 11 o'clock, 

 the President, Henry P. Walcott in the chair. 

 No business being brought before the meeting, it 

 Adjourned to Saturday, March 31. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 



Fertilizers : — Agricultural, Intellectual, Moral, and 

 Political. 



By Rev. Fbedebick N. Knapp, Plymouth. 



Before entering on the subject announced for today's discussion, 

 as I am a new man among you, allow me to state why, even if 

 not of the regular brotherhood, I may still, perhaps, make some 

 claim on strictly horticultural grounds to your kind consideration. 



I cannot exactl}' say, according to the soldier's formula of 

 boasting, that " I have fought, bled and died in the service," but 

 I can say that for the last forty, — yes, fifty years, excepting during 

 the four years of the war, when my hands and thoughts were 

 otherwise occupied, the sun has not shone a single day, from 

 April to October of each year, that has not seen me at early dawn, 

 and for an hour at least, — usually for two or three hours, — at 

 work in my garden. And a certain sweetbrier hedge ten feet in 

 breadth, and seven rods long, from plants of my own raising, 

 from the seed, if called upon by an}' passer by, at any time in 

 the mouths of June or July will testify in its own delightful way 

 to the care that has been bestowed upon it. 



And in order to show how true I am to the cause, even at cost 

 of the esteem of more thrifty neighbors, I will repeat an inci- 

 dent which, as I recollect, I narrated not long ago at the table of 

 the Massachusetts Agricultural Club, when that lover of plants 

 and lover of men. Col. Wilder, was still here with his gracious 

 presence. It was thus : — Two or three years ago I was transplant- 

 ing, day after day, very early in the morning, a qiiautitj' of seedling 

 honeysuckles and seedling sweetbriers, very minute in size, hav- 

 ing the second pair of leaves just starting. A near neighbor, who 



