190 MASSACHUSETTS HOKTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



energy and enterprise begotten of l)iisiness methods, these prized 

 results of love's labor would have staid iu the spot where they first 

 saw the light, in the possession only of their originator or his im- 

 mediate friends, and the millions who have enjoyed them would 

 have never known that pleasure. 



In these latter years, however, some of our most earnest stu- 

 dents of plant life, and of methods of fertilization and propaga- 

 tion, those who are striving hardest to discover or to produce new 

 varieties, are not amateurs, nor are they enthusiasts, working solely 

 for love of the work, but the}' are men who know the value in 

 hard cash of anything meritorious. The spirit which has spanned 

 the continent with railways, and covered it with a maze of tele- 

 graph wires, which lines our streets with magnificent buildings and 

 tasteful stores, and which has thrown the treasures of the whole 

 world at our feet is the same identical spirit as that which ani- 

 mates and spurs on oui great hybridizers and rosarians, and which 

 ransacks ever}' corner of the earth, braving the dangers of the wil- 

 derness and the pestilence of the tropics in the great quest for 

 something new or rare. 



The florist of a generation ago was in most cases a pretty hum- 

 ble and obscure individual. He was generally a man who was 

 employed, by one or several parties, to keep their grounds in 

 order ; and occupying as he did a station socially about on a plane 

 with the coachman and hostler he was expected to be as expert 

 at milking the cow, and wheeling out the ashes, as he was at tying 

 bouquets. His hothouses were of the crudest pattern ; small, in- 

 convenient, poorly heated, and set with but little regard to fitness 

 of location or aspect. Our modern devices for heating, ventilat- 

 ing, and propagating were unknown to him, and he was as inno- 

 cent as a child regarding the much discussed questions of the com- 

 parative merits of hot water and steam, theories of circulation and 

 radiation, and many other problems that interest his more fortu- 

 nate brother of the present day. His stock of plants was more 

 of a museum than anything else, and occasionally it was mainly a 

 hospital. The hospitals iu some instances are unfortunately still 

 to be found. His bouquets, if we could see them now, would be 

 regarded as curiosities. With a stick in the middle to keep them 

 straight, and the flowers wound on as tightly as they could be 

 packed together, they were indeed marvels of workmanship. 

 About the only designs attempted, besides bouquets, were wreaths 

 and a few crosses. These were fashioned on sticks or hoops. 



