130 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



remain to most of our farmers mysteries still, and generation 

 follows generation in the same dull round. 



The facts few will deny ; the results we must deplore ; relief 

 must be sought and found, if not on this line then on some other, 

 but what? 



The economic advantages which would be derived from a wider 

 diffusion of horticultural knowledge and a better horticultural 

 practice need not be detailed before this audience. The physical 

 advantages which pupils in school would derive from spending 

 some time each day in these out-door lessons and exercises, it 

 needs no ai*gument to enforce, and if thus a love for the garden 

 and its better and finer products could become wide-spread, there 

 must result an influence of infinite value upon the habits and 

 lives of our people. 



Above and beyond all this, however, there are relations to the 

 higher life of man which should not be left out of the account. 

 In the physical laboratorj^ the scientist deals with forces almost 

 entirely under his control ; in the garden the thoughtful pupil sees 

 himself working with forces beyond his control, — forces running 

 toward grand, harmonious, beautiful, beneficent ends, on lines 

 laid down by an intelligence infinitely beyond his own. If the 

 " uudevout astronomer is mad," the gardener who cannot discern 

 the spiritual significance, the infinite suggestions, of that with 

 which he deals, must be akin to the clod he turns. There is some- 

 thing in the culture and study of plants that carries the mind 

 outward and upward toward the Infinite. I shall never forget the 

 look, deep beyond his years, of a little boy, nuich in love with 

 plants, as he broke in upon the conversation in the garden, as the 

 sun was setting, with the question, '*Do not plants think? I 

 thought they did." That boy, before taking any lessons in botany- 

 had three hundred specimens in his herbarium. The bo}' has 

 become a man, and a lawyer in New York, but his love for 

 Nature is as strong as ever, and his vacation rambles and studies 

 keep his thoughts fresh and young. 



The beauty and the grandeur of natural scenery are beyond the 

 appreciation of many ; they often appeal to us with a power which 

 exhausts while it uplifts ; we can read their deepest meaning only 

 in our rarest moods. An added meaning and an added grace is 

 given to Nature by the skilful and loving hand. 



In the course of study in our common schools no provision has 

 been made hitherto for cultivating a taste for natural beaut3\ 



