102 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



living plant. I fear, should we attempt to cover in detail so great 

 a territory tliat we should not have ranged verj' far before all of 

 vay allotted time and your patience would be exhausted ; and we 

 shall therefore do well to concentrate our energies upon the charac- 

 teristics of its salient points. 



It is undoubtedly the case, that the point of view from which the 

 Horticulturist regards the Plant, is very different from that of the 

 professional Botanist. For the former, the plant has its highest 

 interest in its adaptability, actual and possible, to the necessities 

 and enjoyments, both bodih' and mental, of mankind ; and its sus- 

 ceptibility to indefinite improvement along these lines is one of its 

 greatest charms. But to the scientific or philosophical naturalist, 

 the plant is more of au abstraction. It chiefly interests him for 

 what it represents of natural laws and phenomena. He regards it 

 as a being, filling a most important place in nature by virtue of its 

 very perfect adaptability to the conditions of that place, and each 

 of its parts exists for a similar reason. The root is an organ for 

 the absorption of liquids from the soil, the leaf for the manufac- 

 ture of organic from inorganic materials, and the stem to bring 

 these two into proper relationships with each other and with their 

 suiToundings. The flower is but a higlily-perfected device for 

 securing the co-operation of two parents in the production of off- 

 spring ; the fruit is the agency b}^ which is secured the necessary ripen- 

 ing and wide scattering of the seed, and the seed itself is but a spe- 

 cialization of tlie plant structure for holding the life of the species 

 for a time in suspension, so to speak, to enable it to continue exist- 

 ence over certain unfavorable periods. And these organs have their 

 immense variety of forms simpW to fit them better to perform these 

 functions, under the different conditions to which they are subjected. 

 That they are useful to man, or that they have beauty to delight 

 xis, is, from this point of view, but incidental ; and is either but 

 the happj' coincidence of our own needs and tastes with what is 

 best for the plant, or else the result of the gradual adaptation in 

 times past of our own needs and tastes to what there is in nature 

 best adapted to supply or gratify them. The plant is the creation 

 of its ancestrj^ and its surroundings, and represents the resultant 

 of innumerable influences acting upon it from these tT\-o sources. 

 The plant, indeed, from the scientific point of view, represents the 

 meeting point, or focus of an infinite number of forces or influences 

 acting upon it from varying directions and witli varying intensity, 



