656 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Then what socializers are fruits and flowers by tlieir taste and beauty ! 

 The pear, peach, apple, cherry, and all the smaller fruits of flavor, seem to 

 be half soul and half body, and to mediate between the spirit and the flesh. 

 Who cares to eat fine peaches or strawberries by himself? We must share 

 the treasure, like a choice poem or sparkling paragraph. All persons of 

 gentle culture have this feeling, and every good-hearted man, however 

 rough his hand, is no stranger to it. How obvious it is in all fruit-growers 

 at their gatherings I and although the quantity of the choice fruit under 

 view may be small, they insist upon sharing it in good fellowship. It may 

 be a single choice apple or pear for the whole dozen of amateurs; but out 

 comes the pocket-knife, and all have a fair portion. I believe that the 

 growing of fine fruits has introduced a new element into society, and has 

 made the taste of good things to educate the higher taste that feeds on the 

 beautiful, and brings men together in the fellowship of refinement and in- 

 telligence. The strawberr}^, the raspberr}^, the peach, and the pear have 

 been great civilizers in America, and their work is not done as yet. 



The more express beauties of the garden carry out this work, and there 

 is something wonderfully assimilating in all scenes and objects of pure 

 taste. Flowers are wine to the eye, and they who enjoy them find them- 

 selves won to genial companionship, that softens and exalts and does not 

 inebriate. When combined with the various charms of the landscape they 

 have a certain enchantment, and the rose or the honeysuckle is a precious 

 poem when it interprets our old homestead or our pet haunt. Then how 

 comparatively small the cost of much of this rare beauty. Buy a dozen or 

 two of roses or phloxes of choice kinds, as you can for some two or three 

 dollars a doien, and see what will come of them. What exquisite bloom 

 in those bush-roses, in that splendid Chateaubriand, that luxuriant Mrs. El- 

 liot, that stately Pius IX! and what witchery in those climbers that run 

 like roguish imps upon everything that 'will hold them, and are Puck in 

 frolic and Ariel in aspiration! Those phloxes, I confess, amaze me by the 

 perfection of their color and the continuance of their bloom. For two months 

 that Valery has charmed us with its rich Magenta clusters, and that Alba 

 perfecla has soothed and even evangelized us by those petals of exquisite 

 white, with its interior of pink, as if love and purity were blending to- 

 gether, and the pure in hrart were flaming into rapture as they begin to 

 see God. Yet the twelve phloxes cost less than a good bottle of wine, and 

 for two months their cups have been full of nectar, and now are filling 

 again. 



The eloquent speaker in conclusion gave a brief description of his own 

 country residence. Eight jx^ars ago he purchased eight acres of land, still 

 unreclaimed and the fit abode of snakes and crows; but upon reducing it 

 by cultivation and bringing out its picturesque points, by an application 

 of some of the well known principles of landscape gardening, he had suc- 

 ceeded in making it one of the most beautiful spots in the town. 



On motion of Mr. Bull, the thanks of the Association were tendered to 

 the Rev. Dr. Osgood for his very interesting address, and a copy was re- 

 quested for their use. 



Adjourned. JonN W. Chambers, Secretary. 



