114 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1895. 



and even towns, have well-kept parks ; and what is much more appre- 

 ciated and indulged in by the people than even the parks, large tracts 

 of apparently primeval forest. Aside from the well-made and grace- 

 fully designed walks in these forests, nature has full and absolute sway. 

 And no truer testimony to man's primitive love of pure nature could 

 be given than the solid streams of people, flowing out after the 

 work of the day from the sultry city into these forest walks. In our 

 garden we must have the natural forest. 



Time fails me in which to even mention briefly the Royal Gardens 

 at Kew, near London, and also some gardens in our own country 

 that rank among the finest in the world ; notably the Missouri Botani- 

 cal Garden, the botanical garden at Cambridge, and others. Their 

 very magnificence places them beyond us ; and the enormous expense 

 of their maintenance, for the Missouri garden nearly $100,000 a 

 year, enforces a realization of the fact that a country can afford but 

 a few of such great institutions. 



I will ask you to consider with me for a moment the charms and 

 advantages of an altogether different kind of garden. Suppose we 

 had a tract of land just as God and nature made and planted it. 

 Within reasonable limits, the smaller it is the better, so that it con- 

 tain a sample, if possible, of all the kinds of soil and slopes of 

 "Glade and Mead," and exposures to be found in, we will say, 

 Worcester County. It should have a bit of river, a pond, a bog, a 

 grassy meadow, hillside slopes, — north, south, east and west, — caves 

 and rocks and springs. It should be as near the city as possible and 

 readily accessible to all ; and we will suppose that it is covered with 

 vegetation and peo[)led with animals, fiom microscopic infusoria to 

 American Indians, just as it was before the Mayflower lauded. What 

 lessons would such a plot teach us? In the first place we would have 

 its geology from the Archean rocks through the Glacial drifts to the 

 flint arrow-heads of the Age of Man. We have also the native 

 animals, each in its chosen nest or pool or hole or den or covert. 

 These all will help to complete the endless chain of nature, animate 

 and inanimate, which our sciences are so prone to break into fragments, 

 but which must retain its entirety, if life is to survive. But passing 

 specially to the botanical side, what do the trees and plants teach us 

 as they stand in their natural places ? Each kind, from the lichen on 

 the rock to the pine and the oak, would tell us, did we but care to read 

 its story, of geological ages of unremitting struggle. And each 

 would tell us, did we but study its constitution aright, exactly what 

 weapons and cunning it has used ; just what chemical and physical 



