104 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



STUDY OF PLANT LIFE. 

 By Supt. John R. Dunton, Rocklaad. 



"What are you ? 



A hundred and forty pounds, more or less, of bone and muscle, 

 sensitive to heat and cold, whose needs are food, clothing and 

 shelter. 



Of course you are that, and in the next breath you say "my 

 house," "my coat," "my body." Well what are you, if what I see 

 is only yours? You do not know and I do not know, but we both 

 do know that we live and think, and that in consequence of our 

 thinking we enjoy or suffer or decide upon courses of action, and 

 that our bodies do our bidding. Explain it as you may you are 

 more than the weight that tips the scale beam, and you have capac- 

 ities and needs beyond those of the horse you drive, or the dog 

 that follows at your heels. 



What are you doing? Thinking, aren't you? Thinking all the 

 time. Perhaps beautiful thoughts, perhaps old and threadbare and 

 distasteful ones ; sometimes thinking thoughts that lead to action, 

 sometimes thinking aimlessly — changing as often as the clock ticks 

 and idly drifting on a sea of dreams, — but always thinking. 



He who can interpret the messages they bring is educated. Edu- 

 cation is not confined to books, nature forestalls the schoolmaster ; 

 the child begins his education in the cradle and he must continue 

 it through youth and manhood and old age — who can say that he 

 ends it at the grave ? Then as becomes their high office as minis- 

 ters to the soul that dwells within them, but while we are caring 

 for the body and supplying the physical needs we should not neg- 

 lect the self. Yes, man is more than a stomach ; food for mind 

 can not go in at the mouth, yet it must be fed or go through life 

 starving and little and lean, and go forth naked when the time 

 comes for it to leave the body it inhabits. It is well that we feed 

 these bodies of ours and shelter them from the cold and clothe 

 them. 



EDUCATION IS NOT CONFINED TO THE SCHOOLS. 



Every man of common sens^ is to a greater or less degree edu- 

 cated. If he puts his mind to his work and if he observes and 

 thinks and adopts means to secure desired ends in consequence of 



