180 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



illustration, the erroneous statement in an article in the " Century " 

 magazine for March, 1883, by John Burroughs, who wrote : " The 

 limbs of the White Pine tend to recur at regular intervals, like the 

 rounds of a ladder. As it shoots upward in the forest it pulls this 

 ladder up after it, so that the tallest trees are limbless for eighty 

 or ninet\' feet." Again, the last quoted writer says in " Scrib- 

 ner's" magazine for Februarj', 1881 : " It is a curious and note- 

 worthy fact, that, for the glow-worm of the Old World, Nature 

 should have given us the fire-fly of the New. It strikes one as a 

 typical fact. Our fire-fly is the glow-worm Americanized." The 

 truth is that we have both fire-flies and glow-worms here ; the 

 speaker had collected them within ten miles of Boston. The pub- 

 lication of such mis-statements shows how defective is the edu- 

 cation which permits their being made, and the necessity of such 

 a reformation in school training as the essayist had so well pre- 

 sented. 



Edmund Hersey said he had been much gratified and instructed 

 by the lecture today. Children ought to be educated to read the 

 great book of Nature. Too many of our people are in this re- 

 spect uneducated. Parents are to blame if they do not make 

 their children realize something about Nature. He would not 

 have them instructed solely for the purpose of making them gar- 

 deners, but that they might be fitted by their education to enjoy 

 life better, whatever vocation they followed. He would educate 

 children to recognize the Power which laid out the plan of growth 

 in all things, and executed that plan. 



Leverett M. Chase wished to express one thought. A German 

 proverb teaches that " whatever we would introduce into our 

 national life we must first introduce into our schools." Our 

 country has unequalled resources ; we have every variety of soil, 

 temperature and humidity. Let our people but learn to utilize our 

 resources and America will be the most productive and beautiful 

 country in the world. But the most important result will be the 

 tendency to check urban growth, — one of the most striking and 

 alarming features of our civilization, whose crop is the destruction 

 of what is best in men, — and to increase the production of the best 

 and most profitable crop that can be raised and that is, strong, 

 virtuous, intelligent men and women. 



Rev. A. B. Muzzey said there had been no paper presented 

 here which goes down deeper than the one of today. Our public 



