ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE, AT PALACE GARDEN, OCT. 4, 1860. 

 BY PROFESSOR CYRUS MASON. 



The green-houses of the north have filled this hall with their 

 richest tropical collections. We stand in such a garden as Eve 

 lamented to abandon ; but could she have foreseen the ingenuity 

 and enterprise of her sons, she might have softened her lament 

 over flowers that never would in other climates grow : for, here 

 are blooming, in our wintry regions, the very species she che- 

 rished. 



The earliest men, the men of the tropics — if we may trust 

 Columbus and Americus — lived idly, yet gently and modestly in 

 gardens of native fruits, sheltered by leaves, without clothing, 

 and with no wants which their gardens did not supply. We have 

 transferred their gardens into a wintry climate, yet not without 

 many labors and arts suggested and enforced by our passage from 

 the equatorial to these frosty regions. 



To make these frosty regions the cheerful homes of civilized 

 men, was the labor assigned to us by our great Taskmaster when 

 he elevated the pole so as to make a fruitful summer under a 

 northern sky, and, by the vicissitudes of summer and winter, to 

 make the wants which make our civilization. 



The great end of civilizing labor is to fill the habitable parts 

 of the earth with a happy people. War and want spread men, at 

 an early day, thinly over all regions capable of a fruitful sum- 

 mer ; but their wide dispersion, and the violence which induced 

 it, with the fear of further disturbance, led to national exclusive- 

 ness, while conflicting religions cherished national hatreds. At 

 the gates of each nation were placed walls, forts, batteries, pro- 

 hibitions to exclude the men and the products of other nations. 

 But, occasional travelers, like Herodotus and Marco Polo, brought 



