The Effect of Horticulture on the Horticulturist.  Mr. President,  	It is sometimes profitable to look  beyond the processes of the arts we pursue and  gain if possible a glimpse of their moral and  material results on ourselves and the world.   It is a fact not often considered but at any  rate past all question that man is moulded   in body and soul both by the food he eats  and the pursuit he follows. Feed him for un-  limited generations under arctic skies exclusive-  ly with the fat of the seal and the walrus  and he is inevitably a savage with all the  higher instincts merged and last in the low-  er. Or let his energies, physical and men-  tal be expended, while centuries pass, in  hunting and fishing and war, so expended 



in short, that his daily food shall depend whol-  ly on the daily destruction either of his fellows  or the lower animals, and then will all the  amenities of his character die out from disuse  and the ferocities rise into perpetual and bru-  tal vigor. On the other hand wherever on Earth  or whenever in history man's food has com-  prised an abundant variety of flesh, cereals  and fruits, all brought to highest perfection  by industry and art, you will not fail to  find then and there the best specimens of a  genuine manhood. And more especially   will this be true because in such case the  hand and the brain combine to multi-  ply those forms of plenty and comfort  and beauty which are incident to the high-  est civilization and refinement.   	And indeed if coming a   little closer to our topic and dropping for  the moment the question of food we scruti- 



nize the different employments of civilized   life we shall discover that each one of them  while it helps to supply the countless wants of   the world produces its special and peculiar  effect on the body and mind of the worker,  and so far is this general fact recognized  that we hardly expect that he who delves  through life in damp and darkness for  the values that lie under the Earth will pre-  sent a face so attractive or a form so vig-  orous as he who works in the open air and  the pure sunlight. So neither do we expect  that the man who makes or vends that which  degrades or destroys his fellows will in the  outcome be either intellectually or morally  equal to him who makes or vends that  which humanity needs. Nay I will go  further than this and say that all the  vocations differ from each other in their  reactive effect on the physical, intellectual 



and moral calibre of those who pursue them,  for I am a thorough believer in the doc-  trine that every man is moulded, even to the  minutest particulars of character by the  work he does and by the fruits of it.  	Bear with me therefore  while I attempt the somewhat difficult task  of setting forth briefly those qualities in  the work that tend to the intellectual and  moral improvement of the worker. In this  way we shall be able to show clearly what is  the rank which horticulture holds in the  long catalogue of vocations. I hardly need  say at the outset that that labor which in-  cites the smallest modicum of intellectual  effort while it involves the largest amount  of muscular strain and evolves the raw-  est and coarsest of salable products  tends constantly to assimilate the labor-  er to a likeness of the work he performs. 



Drudgery rayless and hopeless, drudgery that  excludes all necessity for skill and judg-  ment and just suffices to meet the need of  shelter and the craving of the stomach,  takes man as God created him, and recre-  ates him in its own repulsive image, crowns  the muscular arms and massive shoulders  with an empty head and makes a being  who is all brawn and no brain. But work  becomes more elevated in its reflexive effect  just in proportion as you infuse into it  an intellectual element and thus reduce  the necessity for exhausting muscular toil.  	In this regard a host of voca-  tions have during the last few decades been  lifted out of the slums of drudgery by the  help of improved machinery, which de-  mands skill and intelligence to run it rather  than force of muscle. The superior agricul- 



tural implements that have revolutionized  farm work have made such a discount on mere  muscle and such a draft on experience and  skill and judgment that the brutalizing  toil and the ancient tools are buried togeth-  er, and though there are still drawbacks  in the condition of the farmer he now tends  morally and intellectually upwards.  	These considerations will  justify the inference that any employment  will contribute to the improvement of those  who pursue it according as it fulfills the  three following conditions.  	1st Combining the necessity of both intel-  lectual and muscular exertion, the exper-  ience, skill, judgment and even scientific   knowledge it demands must direct and  dignify the labor of the hand.  	2nd Its products must comprise both 



the useful and the beautiful in their high-  est attainable perfection.  	3rd Its products must supply some   genuine human want in such a way as  to increase the sum total of health and hap-  pines.   	Now apply these tests to any indus-  trial pursuit and in proportion as it ans-  wers or fails to answer these three conditions  will its result on the character of him  who follows it be correspondingly harmful  or helpful. Take the business of tobacco   raising followed as the sole means of liveli-  hood in some parts of this country. It does  not demand any high degree of skill or  judgment, nor does it produce any con-  stant intellectual strain. Its product is  neither useful nor beautiful nor does it  supply any genuine human need, conse- 



quently we are not to expect that the business of  tobacco raising will in and of itself furnish  the finest specimens of a true manhood.  	But leaving you to make  your own application of these crucial  tests to the other vocations let us enquire with  a more careful minuteness how far horti-  culture fulfills these requirements for the  most salutary reflexive influence. For  we shall find if I mistake not that horti-  culture viewed in reference to the incentives  it offers to personal progress stands at the   very summit of all the industrial employ-  ments. First regarded as an art its various  products are brought to high excellence by  numerous processes which require the great-  est expertness to manage them successfully.  As horticulture is the perfection of agri-  culture so the skill demanded for con- 



ducting its operations correspondingly sur-  passes that which is exercised on the meadow  and the field. Take for example all the  methods by which new forms of vegetable  life in the mystery of reproduction spring  from the old. The horticulturist presides  over the wonderful evolutions through which  the beautiful phases of plant life pass from  one generation to another. He is in very truth  the High Priest of Nature by whose aid  she brings forth the beautiful improved  fruits rather than the astringent and crab-  bed offerings of the natural tree. He touches  her secret springs and a thousand tiny  shapes whose loveliness no art can equal  spring up responsive to his touch. But  to accomplish such results with complete  success he must know his material with  the minutest familiarity. He must know  not only theoretically in the widest range 



how it is done but practically in   the smallest particulars how to do it. To select  seed that is sound, to secure its vigorous ger-  mination in spite of untimely frosts and ex-  cessive moisture, to defend it against the  innumerable enemies that lurk in the soil  or swarm in the air, to surround it with  the nicest balance of all those conditions  that promote a strong and healthy   growth, to give it in short a successful  and sympathetic care all the way from  germination to flowering and fruitage calls  imperatively for an amount of judgment, fore-  sight, patience, and skill which hardly any  other occupation demands. Let the man  whose nature is incapable of these qualities  or of the love which the beautiful creations  of the garden naturally inspire seek some  other pursuit. Let him swing the woodman's  axe or travel with a wandering circus but 



withhold him from touching with clumsy  fingers processes whose successful handling  is above his reach.  	But not less of the peculiar  intelligence and readiness of the expert do  all the modes of vegetable propagation  known to the gardener's art require. Re-  production by cuttings, of word or rare-  ly of roots wherein new individuals are  evolved from the bud of the parent stock,  the proper balancing of heat, light and   moisture is the work of adequate  experience and discernment. For in the  excess of water the new plantlet dies from  gorging, or in the lack of it by dessication.  Heat kills it if too high by over-stimulation,  if too low by chilling, and light too strong  exhausts its fluids faster than the rate of  supply, but too weak retards the progress  of healthy growth and promotes decay. 



Now to keep this trinity of forces in the right  mean between under and over extremes and  in such complete harmony with each  other as to secure the best possible growth  is a nicer operation than one might think.  Propagation also by layering in all its forms,  and by budding and grafting and by all  the means by which the minute rudiment  hidden under the bark is helped to perform  the miracle of self transformation with individu-  al life, do they not all if done with artis-  tic skill require patient practice, the true  eye, the deft fingers, and the level head?  	And so we might go on if  time permitted to show that all the processes  which follow germination from fertilizing  and sheltering and pruning to the gather-  ing and preserving of fruits equally compel  the attainment of a capacity of adapting   means to ends which make alike the suc- 



cessful horticulturist and the practical  man.   	But we must leave this phase of the  subject to glance at horticulture in its   scientific aspect, an aspect in which it   presents the strongest incentives to intellect-  ual progress. It is a difficult task to draw  the dividing line between science and or-  dinary knowledge so as to show the precise  point where the one leaves off and the other  begins. For much of science is ordinary  knowledge and not a little of the knowl-  edge that is common to all is scientific.  But a sentence or two will give you a   glimpse at least of the difference between  them. Unscientific knowledge gathers in   the more obvious properties and relations  of things. Never penetrating below their  surface nor discovering their more recon- 



dite relations it is consequently superfi-  cial, fragmentary and incomplete. It  serves however for all the common purposes  of life. The man who knows nothing about  the center of gravity will walk a tight rope  or avoid a precipice quite as well as the  strongest student of Newton's Principia, and  he will make food and drink answer  their purpose despite his ignorance of  the proportions of oxygen and hydrogen  composing the one or the carbon and  nitrogen found in the other. He will more-  over make his clothes as sure a protection  from cold as if he knew the whole catalogue  of non-conducting fabrics. Nevertheless his  house is erected, his bread is raised and  baked, his butter churned and his clothes  spun and woven and washed by the ap-  plication of scientific principles all 



which operations would, on the whole, be better  performed if the science involved were thor-  oughly known and consciously applied.  Scientific knowledge then is only such an   addition to ordinary knowledge as makes  it full complete and exhaustive. It is the   knowledge that is widest and most ac-  curate, in short our most valuable and  practical knowledge. It gives us the  fundamental reasons of things, places  in our hands innumerable safeguards   against disease, danger and losses, solves  for us a thousand mysteries and puts  ten-thousand superstitions to  flight. Many a man, though igno-  rant of books is a natural scientist  by reason of the power and habit of   a deeper insight into the facts and things   he observes and handles and such a man 



will attain the mastery of and be a leader  in whatever vocation he follows. Science  moreover has been defined as that knowledge  by which we accurately predict future events.  The astronomer predicts the advent of com-  ets, the path of the planets, the occurrence  of eclipses. The horticulturist predicts a   multitude of sure results in the vegetable  world. Even if a thoughtful observer has  watched the weather in any region until  from the conditions of wind and air and  sky he can foretell the recurrence of calm  or storm he is in so far a genuine scientist.  Scientists then are far more numerous  than we are want to suppose, for only a   tithe of the honored many rush into print  or mount the rostrum. But again the  scientist discovers what the expert applies.  The one is a thinker, the other a worker. 



If genuine both are equally practical  and both are equally indispensable to each  other and to the progress of the world. For  without the scientist the expert would degen-  erate into a hopeless drudge and without  the expert the scientist would become an  idle and worthless dreamer, and in ei-  ther case the world meantime would  lapse into barbarism.  	But it is a marvellous   fact that the thinker and the worker  though inevitably united in purpose are  forever at variance in spirit, and that  being in perpetual discord they have lashed  each other with unmusical epithets, for-  getting that their common efforts have  fed and clothed and sheltered and civ-  ilized Earth's teeming millions ever  since science and industry were born.  It is because of the need of a more sym- 



pathetic union between these two part-  ners in securing the progress of the world  that the Agricultural College has chosen  for its motto "Science with Practice."  	But if such be the close-  ness of kinship between science and in-  dustrial art how far does horticulture  owe the salutary influence it exerts on   character to the intellectual stimulation  which science affords? So far indeed that  no other useful art draws so heavily on  science for its resources. Not less than  five natural sciences combine to form the  conglomerate rock on which horticulture  is securely based. Chemistry coming to  the aid of the horticulturist teaches  him to discern all those subtle and si-  lent movements whereby the lifeless mold  is transformed into the living plant  and finally into the ripened fruit. 



It reveals daily to his gladdened vision  the perpetual mystery in which under the  quickening influence of sun and rain  countless new and beautiful forms of   life are annually raised from the   dead. It discloses to his questioning eyes  all the capacities and constituents of  the soil wherein his treasures lie and  determines with exactness the nature and  value of the various fertilizers he em-  ploys as incentives to vegetable growth.  It instructs him how to subdue to his  service that subtle demon heat, power-  ful alike to destroy and to make alive,   and how by artificial expedients to  reduce it to a harmless menial ready  to do his bidding.  	Economic Botany  comes in with an equal incitement to 



mental effort, for it introduces him to a  more intimate acquaintance with the  plants he handles. Pointing out with the  nicest accuracy their forms, color, classi-  fication, habits of germination and  growth, their sexual organs and modes  of fructification, revealing in short all   the conditions of the highest vitality and  the surest fruitage it helps to make him  the perfect master of the business he follows.  	And of like value is vegeta-  ble Physiology which since it treats of   the vegetable cell, its growth and group-  ing, the forming of fibre and the struct-  ure of the entire plant lies in the same  line of incentive to study and thought.  But how shall we measure the worth   of such knowledge of the laws controll-  ing the vicissitudes of climate as science 



has yet attained to? Shall we reckon it by  the vast losses in garden and vineyard and  orchard suffered by reason of unfamiliar-  ity with the fundamental facts of meteor-  ology? Shall we not mark the fact that  the horticulturist is engaged in a per-  petual struggle wherein the warm sun-  light, the gentle rains and breezes are   his allies, but the gale, the untimely  frost and flood and protracted drouth   are his deadly foes - foes by which if he  does not study their modes of attack he  will be perpetually worsted? And be-  cause no skill or watchfulness can  withstand some forms of these hostile  forces must he therefore make an un-  conditional surrender to them all?  Moreover in a wider view of the facts 



which climatology presents how many  millions would have been saved to this  state if a few horticulturists had known  in the outset what kinds of apples would  stand the extremes and severities of weath-  er in every county? And what a bene-  faction will the Agricultural College  bestow upon Iowa when in the near  future its nurseries shall furnish in  abundance such hardy Russian  varieties as will defy the blizzard  and the dry freeze in every locality?  	But the horticulturist  has other enemies which are often more  destructive than the blind and un-  controllable forces of nature. In air  and soil breed with prolific increase  the innumerable host of noxious worms 



and insects which not unfrequently threat-  en utter annihilation to the plants on  which they feed. Whenever a particular   variety of fruit or flower or ornamen-  tal shrub has been brought by culture  and care to a high degree of excellence  or beauty its very perfection seems to  call into life some new species of slimy  creatures whose special mission is to  devour it. On all manner of garden  delicacies the voracious worm and beetle  are demanding to be served first. The  only possible means by which the hor-  ticulturist may defend his favorite  plants lies in the knowledge which  entomology offers whereby he scans all  their habits modes of life and propa- 



gation together with their advancement  from the egg through the various meta-  morphoses which terminate at last in the  perfect insect. Armed with such knowl-  edge he may adapt means for their ex-  termination but without it the plants  he has cherished will often be carried  piecemeal back to the soil from which  they came leaving nothing but the skele-  ton leaves and scarred trunk behind.  	Lastly there is a science  higher and more rarely mastered than all  the rest through whose principles the  clinging vine and fruiting tree and flow-  ering shrub have been brought gradu-  ally up from their wild progenitors to the  highest perfection of use and beauty, and  this science may be called heredity. 



He who would reap a harvest in this field of  thought and practice must gain acquain-  tance with all the abstruse truths that are  grouped together under the name. He  must know that the laws of lineage hold  in the vegetable precisely as they do in  the animal world. He must clearly  perceive that the plant will transmit  not only those properties and parts derived  from the parent stock but also the improve-  ment made upon it by a more favoring   soil and climate and culture. In short  he must theoretically understand and  practically apply with little variation  the principles of treatment, selection,  close breeding, cross breeding and prepo-  tence as the scientific breeder applies  them to develop from the ordinary do- 



mestic animals the more highly prized  and valuable races. For from this science  has come to us all the beautiful and nu-  tritious fruits whose lineage if traced back-  ward will terminate at last in wild and  worthless ancestors. And the horticultu-  rist when he can in this line do the work  of a successful originator not only be-  comes a public benefactor but attains  rare judgment and taste and practical  learning. Of course no single man can  gain profundity in all the sciences I   have touched upon, but every man can   by a diligent employment of his leisure  hours gather in those more obvious facts  in each which stand in closest kinship  with the gardener's art.  	Why need I dwell in hasty  conclusion on the second condition, 



namely that the most improving vocations  display in their products the highest ex-  amples of use and beauty? Are we not   all aware that the highest forms of use  evince their excellence by putting on  the colors and proportion of beauty?  And who shall affirm that all the im-  proved varieties of ripened fruits are  not among the most beautiful objects  that attract the eye and phase the  palate? And finally who shall deny  that in proportion as these adorn his  table and compose his diet does man  become more healthy, amiable and  refined?