502 
STATE HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
of the purple clusters of 'the luscious grape ; whether we di¬ 
rect our attention to the humble but useful pot-herbs and 
esculent vegetables that should furnish a large proportion of 
our daily food, or to the care of the lovely shrubs and flower¬ 
ing plants that adorn our door yards, and enliven the parter¬ 
res of the lawn, and to the tender exotics that need the pro¬ 
tection of glass houses and artificial heat in our rigorous cli¬ 
mate, in all of the various occupations, we are pursuing some 
branch of horticulture. 
ISTow horticulture is an art—it has been called a fine art, the 
fine-art of agriculture, and such we all believe it to be. 
Like every other art, horticulture, to be successfully pursued, 
must have a scientific basis—and this in two directions ; in the 
first, we must consider all that relates to the soils; in tbe 
second, we must study everything that concerns the* plants up* 
on and for which we expend our labor. 
First then, we shall find it necessary to acquire a knowledge 
of the soils, their peculiarities, their qualities, and elements, 
and thus we shall learn their requisite manures.* In these in¬ 
vestigations we must be aided by the sciences of geology and 
chemistry. 
We shall also need a knowledge of the mechanical condition 
of our soils, their wetness or dryness, and their power of resist¬ 
ing the extremes of temperature and their hygrometric state ; 
this requires a knowledge of physics. But, as to the soils, we 
have yet to understand the best methods of its preparation, 
cultivation and treatment, for which we shall be dependent up¬ 
on the laws and appliances of mechanics. 
A wide range of investigation is thus opened before us, and 
the important dependence upon scientific research and study 
muse be realized by the student of horticulture while as yet 
' only considering this branch of the proposition. 
But secondly, he will also find it necessary to make himself 
familiar with the nature of the plants with which he will have 
to deal, whether it be those that are to be cultivated or those 
that must be eradicated. For this purpose’he will be depend¬ 
ent upon botany and tiie botanists. He must acquaint him¬ 
self with the peculiar habits and habitats of the plants ; with 
