178 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



range of interest, honestly measured, are limited, essentially, to 

 the growth and perfecting of the plants themselves as garden 

 products, and his own personal success in their culture. All this 

 is in a worthy direction indeed, and its influence is refining, as 

 far as it goes. But contrast with him another man, equally 

 interested and painstaking in his garden. Equally ambitious for 

 success ; equally gratified when he can place for exhibition on 

 the table, in yonder hall, some new and beautiful specimens, but 

 who is also refreshed, every hour in the day, with thoughts and 

 associations which his careful reading, and his habit of keen 

 observation, and uis scientific study have treasured up for him. 

 Hardly a plant he sets out, or shrub he trains or trims, that does 

 not recall to his thought some beautiful law of nature, or some 

 charming picture of art or poetry, inseparably bound in with that 

 very plant or Sower. Here it is "Picciola" in the fortress of Fen- 

 estrella ; this little plant giving joy and blessed companionship, 

 month after month, to the Count de Charney in his lonely impris- 

 onment, — he who loved his " Picciola" as a mother loves a child. 

 Here it is the picture of Virgil and Maecenas : the aged protector 

 of Rome, when the fields of Italy are laid waste and agriculture 

 abandoned, inducing the poet Virgil to arouse the people to the 

 culture of crops and the care of the garden by writing for them, 

 in the music of verse, that which tells them of flocks and herds 

 and growing vines. For so came to the world that choicest gift 

 of the poet's pen, the "Bucolics" of Virgil, fresh today with the 

 aroma of flowers and the scent of new mown hay. 



Or in another direction, led by this scientific study, the mere 

 bit of coal which a man rakes out of his rose bed, brings to him 

 the thought of how the sunlight which was shining centuries and 

 centuries ago is, literally, stored up in that same coal to cheer 

 and light us today. Is there not something beautiful in thus living 

 as it were this double life, cultivating and enjoying to the full the 

 flowers around us and our own success in our work, and at the 

 same time walking as at eventide in another garden ? 



Who did not envy Dr. Asa Gray, that man so rich in his 

 treasures of botanical knowledge, but richer still in the treasures 

 of his heart, — he who has just gone from us, — who did not envy 

 Dr. Gray his vast acquirement in his special field ! But there is 

 one little book of his, which simply in its title reveals more of 

 "what was in the man, — for I knew him well for years, in his garden 



