164 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



fit the start a fair rudimentary education, the garden is the school 

 to attend, where every plant, animal, and insect is a teacher. 

 These must all be learned ; they are the elements of that education 

 ■which will lead to distinction. As science is the exact knowledge 

 of things, here are the objects to be learned and loved. These 

 terms should be reversed in the order given, because if the object 

 is not loved it can never be thoroughly learned. And we would 

 say here that if a young man does not love the garden and all 

 therein, he should enter some other profession, for there is no more 

 pitiable object in life than a man following a profession that he 

 does not enjoy. 



Systematic Iwtau}" need not necessarily enter largely into the 

 gardener's education, but though he can do without it he will 

 he far more proficient with it. A genuine love for plants will 

 create in him a desire for a knowledge of their systematic order 

 and arrangement ; he will then seek that information as a pleasant 

 pastime, rather than as a branch of his education. The phenom- 

 ena of plant life are far more important to understand in order to 

 know the plant's necessities ; why and how plants grow, how they 

 feed and what they feed upon ; the cause of failure as well as 

 success. The gardener is the only man who knows how to develop 

 a plant to its greatest perfection ; how to improve upon old tN'pes 

 and create new ones. He does not want to learn from the 

 professor ; on the contrary, he should compel the professor to 

 learn from him. As a rule, professors are not scientists ; they are 

 simply the distributors of the facts termed ''scientific," that have 

 been obtained by the observations and experiments of other men. 

 The scientific man is he who has discovered some fact not pre- 

 viously known, and can reduce it to practice. And among our 

 sj'stematic, intelligent gardeners more of such men will be fouud 

 than in any other walk in life. Their operations are so varied that 

 they come in contact with more obstacles that are to be overcome, 

 than any other class of men. They are compelled from the very 

 nature of their business to know more. The mechanic of today 

 learns but a small part of one branch of his business, and this is 

 being coustantl}' repeated without the slightest variation. He is a 

 part of a machine. The gardener must, in a great measure, be gov- 

 erned by the elements, which are very capricious ; he must perfectlj' 

 understand all the conditions of soil and climate and be governed 

 accordingly. Impossibilities are not unfrequently required at his 



