172 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



appearance all much the same ; but in contents as varied as are 

 the packages in the grocer's wagon, each selected for the family 

 whose table it is to supply. 



And if analysis of plants goes on, and all their tastes are 

 catered to in this furnishing of food, we shall, bj'-and-by, instead 

 of ten or twenty, have over fifty or a hundred special forms of 

 nourishment, each one labelled with the name and portrait of the 

 individual it is to serve, down to minute subdivisions of families, 

 each one jealous of its rights. 



The " Duchess of Westminster" and "Princess Imperial du 

 Br6sil " will refnse the food offered to little " Nancy Lee." The 

 ambitious " Queen of the Prairies," with her flaunting robes, and 

 she who wears with her name her "Cloth of Gold," will both 

 haughtily decline to be served with the same viands that satisfy the 

 taste of the modest little "Ida." And our beautiful friend 

 " Chrysanthemum," recently exalted in the eyes of men to a place 

 of special honor, will courteously but significantly wave from her 

 what some sister plant, in humbler place, would gladly shsijre ; 

 while even the quiet little pansy, that looks up to us with such a 

 loving, human eye, will say, "Please give to me that other 

 supply ; this belongs to the little English violet there." 



But enough of this. Without further reference to agricultural, 

 let us pass on to " Intellectual Fertilizers." And, as I as- 

 sume, b}' a natural connection do we pass from one to the other 

 and appl}^ to both the same tests in determining values. The 

 intellect is like the soil, and each illustrates the nature of 

 the other. In order to make it yield a good crop you must not 

 only enrich it but so treat it with proper appliances as to develop 

 into available form the native powers latent there ; converting, as 

 I said of the soil, latent powers into productive forces. Next, 

 you must supply it with food suited both to its nature and to the 

 kind of produce you expect to harvest. This, of course, assumes 

 a careful study (like to a chemical analysis of the soil) of the 

 peculiar qualities of the mind to be treated. And year by year, 

 additional food must be given ; else, like an old field, the mind 

 will " run out." 



In a late number of " The Independent," Maurice Thompson 

 makes a plea from the standpoint of a literary man for what he 

 calls " Greek as a Fertilizer," adopting, you notice, the very 

 phrase I have been using. After telling of the beauty and 



