WHAT SCIENCE HAS DONE FOK GARDENING. 17 



In the matter of frost warnings to the market 

 gardeners it will be interesting to know how much 

 money is saved annually in the timely warnings from the 

 Weather Bureau at Washington of the approach of cold 

 waves, so that the delicate plants might be protected; 

 and yet this is the work from its inception of scientific 

 thought and under the management of scientific ob- 

 servers. 



Again, in the improvement of the implements used 

 to-day in the garden and on the farm, how much of the 

 energy of the tiller is economized with such satisfactory 

 results in the character of the work accomplished, and 

 who will say that these improved machines and tools are 

 not the outcome of careful training in scientific methods, 

 with a knowledge of the principles controlling physical 

 and mechanical laws? In the evolution of the modern 

 plow from its primitive ancestor the wooden beam; the 

 improved Planet, Jr., cultivator, with its many con- 

 venient tools when compared with the old-style hoc 

 and rake; these, with many other improved tools that 

 might be mentioned, should convince any one of the great 

 assistance science is rendering the tiller of the soil in 

 simply this one branch. 



The United States Department of Agriculture has 

 spent millions of money in the past years for the benefit 

 of the gardener and the farmer. It is certainly true that 

 no one is prepared to say that this wealth has been 

 thrown away, and that the agriculturist has not been 

 vastly benefited b} T its expenditure in his behalf. The 

 work of this great department has been almost entirely 

 in the hands of scientific men of well-known ability; and 

 thousands of pages of practical information and con- 

 tributions to knowledge have come from their efforts, 

 attesting the great value of their investigations to the 

 "man with the hoe." 



2 



