?§>IjF Influpnrp nf yinFiruffiiPF. 
bUCH literary leave-takings as epilogues and /’envoys have grown 
into perhaps deserved disuse: for, as Shakespeare says, “A good play 
needs no epilogue;” yet, before taking final leave of a work that has 
constituted the delightful labor of many years, and bidding good-bye, 
as it were, to the thousands of human beings to whom the book will 
afford an introduction, the author would fain add a parting word to 
enforce the incalculable moral, intellectual and aesthetic value of flori¬ 
culture. Science, in any department of knowledge, is of intrinsic worth to 
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the human mind, but floriculture is eminently instructive, useful and agree¬ 
able. If all tbe plants of the world were of one shape, size and color, there 
would result a monotonous uniformity so burdensome to our imagination 
as can scarcely be conceived in the presence of the almost infinite variety we 
now enjoy. Nature, as if enticing us to search for her hidden treasures, has 
produced many wonderful forms so different from each other that our curi¬ 
osity is awakened when we first observe some unusual product of her handiwork; 
®) and, thus stimulated, we are led to look for fresh peculiarities, and to push our 
t, investigations into the innumerable recesses of the vegetable kingdom. 
The researches of the botanists have added largely to our list of food-plants, and have 
given us a sure guide as to which, among the many varieties of edible plants, are best 
adapted to supply our wants. Indeed, primitive man must have been a botanist in a 
small way when he first discovered that plants afforded food fit for his use; so that a rude 
botany must have been the first science cultivated among men. The first step toward 
civilization was therefore made by each wild tribe when, with some uncouth dibble, or 
pointed stick, they planted the first seed in the fruitful earth; and the cultivation of plants, 
though doubtless long confined to the food-plants only, constituted an important factor in 
the career of humanity as it progressed to refinement. Even now, when man has reached 
the greatest height yet attained, there is no better test of the civilization of the individual 
or the nation than the degree in which floriculture has become a fine art. So the ama¬ 
teur culturist may gather confidence from the thought that his favorite pursuit is the first 
and the last step in the progress of civilization. A knowledge of the healing proper¬ 
ties of plants has been found no less useful by physicians. Indeed, for long ages the 
healing art was entirely confined to their use; and Liebig has said that all ordinary dis¬ 
eases may be cured or averted by a judicious change of the constituents of our plant-food. 
418 
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