tken, both on what are flowers and upon the utility o£ flowei'S 

 to an agricultural community. 



The use of floriculture may be stated as, among other ob- 

 jects, inducing a love of beauty order neatness and comfort 

 at home. It promotes a love of beauty, inasmuch as flowers 

 are admired for their beauty apparent or discoverable. Where 

 not apparent, the flower is less prized. And we class flowers as 

 coarse and seedy, delicate, graceful, elegant, superb, «&:c. No 

 one can raise a flowering plant, so called, even marigolds or 

 sunflowers, bluebottles, amaranths or caper-plants, without 

 soon extending his culture to others more attractive. Better 

 raise these than cultivate none — far better the old peony root 

 and cinnamon rose, the lilac and bouncing Bets, than uncomely 

 Weeds by the front door, such as single leaved tansey and 

 motherwort. Begin with something that needs care, and your 

 children will end with something worth admiring. I know of 

 the severest domestic toil of woman on the farm gladdened by 

 her tulips and roses and sweet smelling flowers. Where the 

 wife and daughter improve in loving the beautiful by new ac^ 

 ■quaintance with more and more beautiful flowers, the son and 

 husband will not be slow to follow the example, in the trees 

 and houses and out-buildings. I will admit the extraordinary 

 beauty of the farmer's clean and blossoming potatoes, if he 

 will see how much more beaiitilul is his home from his wife's 

 or dauarhter's flowers nearer the house. So a flower border, 

 and it need not be extensive or expensive, to give all the satis- 

 faction it can render, must be kept orderly and free from 

 weeds. Thus the cultivation of a few plants afford unusual 

 facilities to the children, in teaching them how to become 

 methodical and orderly in other particulars. The experience 

 of parents, who have encouraged a love of flowers in their 

 children, and which they have related to me, is convincing 

 that much profit is here to be gained every way. A few mo- 

 ments' interest in such an use of a bit of land near home, kept 

 secluded from the hens, swine or vexatious intruders, may be 

 seen throughout life in the method and order for graver con* 



