PROCEEDINGS OF THE HORTICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 689 



at this season of the year, but all plants that can by artificial means be forced 

 or rather coaxed into producing their flowers during the cold and dreary months 

 of winter. But in order to illustrate my meaning more particularly, I will 

 give you a familiar example. You are all doubtless acquainted with the 

 common lilac of the gardens, a hardy shrub or bush, which flowers naturally 

 iu the open air during the latter part of May and beginning of June. This 

 iihrub if planted in a pot in the spring, may be placed iu a forcing house about 

 November, when it soon commences throwing out leaves and blossoms and 

 thus becomes a winter instead of a summer flower. 



A forcing house is a conservatory heated to about 70 degrees of heat, and 

 by means of which we are enabled to enjoy at this season almost all plants . 

 that do not flower generally till late in the spring or summer. Flowers are 

 beautiful and lovely at all times and at all seasons, but how much more so 

 during the winter months when almost every plant or tree outside is leafless 

 and dcsolat-e looking. It is then that the}' give such a charm to our homes. 

 For what can give us so great a pleasure after a walk in the outside world 

 during this period of the year, as on returning to our comfortable dwellings, 

 to be welcomed by such beauties as these ; beauties that we never tire of, for 

 each bud or leaf as it expands, unfolds to us new delights and creates for us 

 an ever changing yet constant pleasure. 



The adornment of human dwellings with plants and flowers is traceable to 

 such a remote period of history that its origin is lost in antiquity. They are 

 ornaments that the most refined art cannot even approach to, much more excel. 

 For instance, take any one of the numerous flowers before us ; Avhat is {here 

 either in sculpture or art to equal it. It is true you may imitate a flower or 

 a plant in wax or other material, to a nicety, but after all what is it but a 

 poor imitation. You may pass it perhaps a dozen times a day and the eye 

 rests upon it, without any particular emotion of delight. But place a real 

 living Kose in its place ! What an almost miraculous change comes over us. 

 Each time we behold it, it is with a new thrill of pleasure, for now our finer 

 feelings are interested with joy. Our sense of the beautiful, our sense of 

 smell, our sense of care is brought into play, for we feel that in this we have 

 a living plant that is dependent on us for its existence, and which it so amply, 

 so sweetly repays by its beauty and fragrance. 



To be a lover of flowers it is not necessary to be either a florist or a botanist 

 or even that we should be familiar with the proper or botanic names of plants, 

 although this latter knowledge I cannot too earnestly impress upon every one 

 as being most useful, and I consider the possession of it adds ten fold to our 

 pleasures in tlieir cultivation. Indeed it is sometimes very difficult to des- 

 cribe a flower to another person, so that they understand the particular one 

 we mean, for if we attempt to do so by its leaf or color of its flower, how un- 

 satisfactory it is, as no two persons scarcely ever agree as to a particular shade 

 of color when it is before their eyes, and how is it likely to be so when there 

 is nothing to refer to ; whereas by giving its proper name we are immediately 

 understood ; besides, while the botanic names of plants unlike everything else 

 is universal in all civilized nations. For if you travel to France, or Germany, 

 Russia or Italy, and have no knowledge whatever of the language of either, 

 yet if you enter the garden of the first florist or amateur, you meet with in 

 any of those countries and name any kind of plant by its botanic name, you 

 [Am. Ixst.] Pt* 



