STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 97 



God created flowers as a connecting link between Himself and 

 man, and the}' were made so beautiful that even "• Solomon in all 

 his glorj' was not arrayed like unto one of the humblest of them." 

 All the way down through the ages of the past, and even to the 

 present day, floriculture has kept even pace with civilization, culti- 

 vation and refinement. 



And yet there are people to be found occasionally, even in this 

 enlightened age, who will call all this rubbish, and who have no love 

 for flowers, and no appreciation of their beauty. I recollect a case 

 of this kind — two or three years ago, (while attending the yearly 

 campmeeting at Northport) . A lad}' acquaintance who was as great 

 a lover of flowers as myself, suggested that we trim our town tent 

 with wild flowers and vines, to take away the bare, hut-like look of 

 the building ; while we were arranging the flowers and vines, a 

 minister from our town sat looking at us for some time quite soberl}', 

 and at last he said to me : " Do you expect to get to heaven anj 

 quicker for that, or to see any such rubbish as that there ? " 

 "Sir," said I, "I could as soon conceive of a heaven without a 

 God, as a heaven without flowers ! In fact, I consider flowers a 

 gift of God, and part of heaven itself." He said: "That is 

 blasphemy." Do you think it was? I do not. Trulv and well has 

 one of our eminent divines said: "Blessed is he who really loves 

 flowers ; who loves them for their own sake — for their beaut}', their 

 associations, the joy the}' have given and alivays loill give ; so that 

 he would sit down among them as friends and companions, if there 

 were no one else on eaith to admire and praise them. But such 

 persons need no blessing of mine. They are blessed of God ! Did 

 he not make the world for them?" 



I said that floriculture had kept even pace with cultivation, civili- 

 zation and refinement. When Babylon was at the summit of her 

 glory, her immense hanging gardens, in which all manner of flowers 

 and fruits were cultivated, were considered so beautiful as to be 

 named as one of the seven wonders of the then known world. 

 Where are her gardens to-day? and where are her,people? Verily 

 they have departed, and faded away together. Rome, when she 

 " sat on her seven hills, and from her throne of beauty ruled the 

 world," was almost like Eden in the superabundance of her fruits 

 and flowers. Her glory has likewise departed. 



But we will come down to our own times. Who looks to find 

 flowers, (except such as nature has sprinkled there), growing about 

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