102 THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



apart some convenient spot for the cultivation of these small fruits, so 

 that from the time that the strawberries ripen until the frosts come 

 again, there will be fresh fruit upon .the. table every clay. 



• iJesides promoting the health of yourself and family, you will be 

 adding largely to the enjoyment of all, and specially of the children. 

 Who has not noticed the eager fondness of children for fruit ? There 

 is scarcely anything that delights them more. If then a few rods of 

 ground devoted to small fruits will contribute not only to the health 

 but to the happiness of your children, will it not pay '? Will not any- 

 thing pay that makes home more attractive to your children ? Home, 

 home, with its delightful memories, not the least of them the visions 

 of delicious strawberries, and fragrant raspberries, and scarlet currants, 

 and huge blackberries, and clusters of grapes. 



But it pays also in an increased intelligence. One can not culti- 

 vate his garden of small fruits Avithout calling into exercise his intel- 

 lectual faculties, and that in many ways. He will think in a different 

 line from that which his mind traveraes when he is engaged in the 

 other and ordinary pursuits of the farm. The mind is enlarged by the 

 contemplation of an enlarged variety of subjects. To grow these small 

 fruits successfully one must study their requiremeuts, not a difficult 

 study by any means, but this exercise of the mind in another channel 

 quickens its perceptions and awakens its activities. Besides, from the 

 very nature of the operations, so different from the rougher and more 

 muscular operations of the farm, there is brought into action the more 

 delicate, sliall we not say the more refined," qualities of thought and 

 action, so that the man becomes more complete and symmetrical in- 

 tellectually. And the children will grow up with enlarged knowledge 

 and more refined tastes, just in proportion as the ordinary routine of 

 farm life is varied and enlivened by the cultivation of those things 

 which are usually embraced in the term horticulture. 



On the score then of intelligence, of refinement, of health, of en- 

 joyment, we commend to our farmers the cultivation of small fruits. 

 Eemember, we say cultivation, not the j)lanting and leaving of them 

 to take care of themselves; that is worse than not to plant at all, for 

 it only ends in disappointment and disgust. But a garden of small 

 fruits, well and lovingly tended, wall repay a thousand fold all the 

 care and thought bestowed upon it, in the increased health, happiness, 

 intelligence and refinement of its possessors. 



