14 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1894. 



moribund faith ; owes and pays reverence to no spurious priest- 

 hood. He relinquishes analysis of pistil and stamen to the 

 student of abstract learning, whose microscope detects germ or 

 fungus, if not bacillus or microbe ; because of whose omnipres- 

 ence and endless fecundity the wonder is that the human race 

 has so long protracted an unwholesome existence. But, 

 in doors or out, in ample field or limited garden, he pursues the 

 bent of his personal taste, thereby escaping the ruts so deadly 

 to intellectual progress ; seeking ever the new and worthy ; 

 avoiding always whatsoever is found upon trial, to be of ill 

 repute, or worthless, when grown. Before him, in all their 

 vitality, are out-spread root, trunk, branch, leaf, bud, bloom, 

 or fruit. His concern is with the present, letting Autumn and 

 Winter alone, like the dead past, to bury their dead. What 

 need has he, in this age of daily or hourly intercommunication ; 

 in this age when thought is borne upon wings of lightning, and 

 perserved upon myriads of printed pages ; in this fair land of 

 ours where, in little more than a single day, he can pass from 

 the depressing infl^uence of ice and snow to the bourgeon and 

 bloom of Magnolia and Rose or, in a few hours more, to the 

 fragrance and flavor of Orange and Pineapple ; what need has 

 he, or why should he trouble himself, for the withered leaves and 

 desiccated stems of a vegetation that, having fulfilled its allotted 

 mission, died as it ought ! 



Nor is the science of Botany, so far as in strict justice it can 

 be termed a science, regarded in the same light as formerly by 

 its most advanced votaries. Meehaii's Monthly, edited by one 

 of the foremost Arboriculturists and Florists in this or any 

 other country, quotes Professor Millspaugh to the subjoined 

 efl[ect, if not with open approval at least without declared 

 dissent : 



" In the old time, and that not so many years ago, all that was 

 taught of l)otany, was how to analyse flowers, so as to be able 

 to understand the descriptions in the text books, and thus 

 enable one to collect and distinguish species — after which speci- 

 mens were carefully dried and put away ; and the results of 

 little more value than the results following a boy's collection of 

 postage stamps. In modern times the flower-lover is really 



