more than this, even, out of the study and practise of horticulture. The dignity and worth of the human spirit is a greater good, to which all else should be made to minister.

You are graduates of a technical school. There are some who go to a technical school with no other idea than to secure training for a profession; there are indeed some who contend that technical schools are necessarily limited in their work to preparation for a vocation, and this is the danger. At about the middle of the nineteenth century the controversy was rife in England as to whether professional studies had any place in a university. Cardinal Newman argued, with all the power of his eloquence, that it is the purpose of a university to confer, not a technical, but a liberal education; and he defined a liberal education as consisting in the culture of the intellect for its own sake, without reference to utilitarian ends.

One can hardly overestimate the value of a liberal education, thus defined, for all, no matter what their calling in life. Every one, whether horticulturist or doctor, or lawyer or engineer-whatever his vocation -must take his place in a community of individuals of varying degrees of culture, of other interests than his own, of broad as well as of narrow outlook, and he can not do it successfully by being merely a horticulturist, or a lawyer. The position he can take, the influence for good he can yield, will depend upon his own expansion of mind, the width of his own sympathies, the breadth of his own culture.

A recent editorial in a New York daily paper called attention to the fact that the French educational mission of seven savants, now in this country, contained but one scientist, and expressed great satisfaction at this fact, as indicating the contrast between French and German culture, of the latter of which we have had enough-ad

nauseam. But the repugnant and unsavory character of German culture is not to be attributed to the extensive development of scientific studies in Germany, but to the fact that her entire educational system, in the schools and out, has been permeated with an antiquated, unchristian, inhuman, abhorrent system of ethics and morality. She was rotten at the heart.

I wish to emphasize the point that liberal education is not necessarily a matter of content of non-utilitarian subjects-but of spirit and of methods. The studies of Greek, Latin and Hebrew were at first introduced into university instruction for utilitarian purposes, but soon became the foundation stones of a liberal education. The studies of medicine, law, theology, engineering, botany, horticulture, may be pursued in such a way as to produce merely doctors, lawyers, divines, engineers, botanists, horticulturists; or they may be pursued with a spirit and method that will produce, as well, men and women of broad culture of liberal education, more competent in their professions, more creditable and satisfactory to themselves, more valuable in their communities. Make your horticultural study, then, not only a means of preparation for a vocation, but also a basis and means of education-of the enlargement of your minds, the enrichment of your lives, the expansion and perfection of your characters.

You are entering upon a noble calling. The outstanding names in horticultureVilmorin (father and son) and Lemoine in France, Thomas Andrew Knight, Veitch and Sutton in England, Robert Fortune in Scotland, Van Tubergen and de Vries in Holland, Correvon in Switzerland, Henderson, Meehan, Bailey, and others in America, would do honor to any profession. You have a reputation to maintain, and an obligation to maintain it.

Moreover, horticulture is one of the later and therefore, one of the finer fruits of civilization. "When ages grow to civility and elegancy," says Lord Bacon, in his essay on gardens, "men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection." The domestication and cultivation of plants is intimately bound up with the time when men, hitherto accustomed to roam, and to depend upon a chance supply of food from wild plants and animals, first began to take up permanent abodes in communities, and therefore found it, not only convenient, but essential to have a local supply insured; yet from all we can learn of the most ancient civilizations, there were no gardens as we now know them. Culinary vegetables, for example, were raised in ancient Egypt, as we learn from inscriptions on the pyramid of Cheops, and from other sources; but while accounts of the splendor of Memphis speak of statues, temples, and palaces, no mention is anywhere made of gardens.

In his letter to Gallus, describing his Laurentian estate,2 Pliny's mind is chiefly occupied with the details of his villa, and while he refers to his tennis court, to an exercise ground with a border of boxwood and rosemary, and to "a terrace walk that is fragrant with violets," mention of his garden seems quite incidental, and all we learn of it is that it "is clad with a number of mulberry and fig-trees"; in other words it does not appear to be a garden, as we understand the term, nor to loom large in the mind of its owner as one of the chief attractions of his summer home.

Even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century Horace Walpole said (in a letter to Conway), "I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening." But gardens and the domestication and cultivation 2"Letters," 1st Ser., Bk. 2, Letter XVII.

of plants, were the inevitable, logical sequence of the establishment of homes and gradually they make their appearance and begin their evolution as one of the finer expressions of civilization.

"Happy is the man who loves flowers," wrote Henry Ward Beecher, and in pleading for more effective writing in American horticultural magazines, he referred to horticulture as "this elegant department of knowledge." Not only may the study of the science itself become an avenue of culture and refinement, but a study of its origins (as a phase of agriculture), and of its historical development leads into some of the most fascinating and illuminating chapters in the history of civilization. If the artificial production of fire is conceded to be one of the greatest steps forward in the intellectual ascent of man, the domestication of wild animals and plants is second only in importance, and the historical study of this wonderful achievement has ramifications that carry one back to the very dawn of civilization, and laterally into enriching contact with archeology, ethnology, geology, plant geography, ancient and modern history, evolution, philosophy and other departments of knowledge.

We know that some of our economic

plants were cultivated by the lake-dwellers of Switzerland while they were yet in the neolithic stage of culture, some three thousand years or more before the Christian Era. "Farmers of Forty Centuries" is the fascinating title of Professor King's study of the agriculture of China; that is, some of our cultivated plants-a date or a grain of rice-represent an unbroken line of living protoplasm, and of human aspiration and upward struggle, extending back some 5,000 or 6,000 years. Like any department of human knowledge, the study of horticulture, thoroughly pursued in all its vari

ous aspects, may become the inspiration and means of a liberal education.

It is probable that the immediate future will offer unusual opportunities in horticulture as in all other fields of worth while human endeavor. The restoration of devastated Europe will not be complete until it includes the esthetic as well as the merely utilitarian. Already the call has come to this country for trained gardeners, for the Hun's conception of the exigencies of war has included the wholesale destruction of trees, parks, orchards and gardens. It is worthy of mention at this time and place that the American Horticultural Society has already collected and forwarded to France the sum of several thousand dollars to be expended in the replacing of ruined fruit trees and orchards.

The need here at home has never been greater. The truth of Lord Bacon's statement has found abundant confirmation in America, for, notwithstanding the early introduction of nurseries and horticulture in the colonies--notably by the Princes, father, son and grandson, on Long Island (1725 and later), by Bartram (1728), Evans and Humphrey Marshall near Philadelphia, by Andrew Jackson Downing ("perhaps the fairest name in American horticultural literature"), by David Hosack (1801) in New York, by M'Mahon (1800), Bloodgood (1820), Hogg (1834), Parsons (1838), Landreth (1874), Thorburn (1802), and a host of other pioneersnotwithstanding these early labors, subsequent development has been slow. But we have now passed the pioneer stage of national development, and the conditions which, for a time, justified our shortcomings in esthetics have ceased to exist; the forests are cleared, the frontier has vanished, mud huts and log cabins (mere houses) have given place to real homes. We have even managed to survive the peri

ods of mansard roofs and brown stone fronts, and our villages and cities have already begun to recognize the value of horticulture and landscape gardening in making centers of business places of beauty as well.

See your vocation, then, in broad perspective-in its relation to the sum total of things; to social needs, spiritual needs, civic needs, human needs-the development of your own character, of a more refined and cultured national character. We are living in one of the most, if not the most momentous period in human history. It is a wonderful privilege to be alive now-to be a part of all that is transpiring, to be entering now upon one's life work. Never has there been a greater need for the best in all things. The self-revelation of the unspeakable Hun has left us with a feeling of disgust, as if we had been in contact with something base and unclean, as indeed we have; and the need was never so urgent as now for an increase of knowledge and the wide diffusion of truth and of spiritual and material beauty. It is your function and privilege to cooperate with the architect, the landscape architect, the town planner, in making beautiful the habitations of men.

There are those to-day who are crying aloud in the land that the work before us of educational reconstruction shall be characterized by making everything primarily or even exclusively "practical"-by choosing our studies and placing our emphasis chiefly with reference to bread-and-butter considerations. This is the great danger ahead of us in our program of education; it is quite as unfortunate to lose sight of the ideal as to forget the material needs of life: A Brooklyn divine has tersely said that, in hitching his wagon to a star, the idealist has chiefly in mind the star, while the administrator the man of affairs-has chiefly in mind the wagon. Hitch your wagon to a

star, by all means, in horticulture, but do not lose sight of either the wagon or the star.

Are you really interested in this workin some phase of horticulture? If you are not, I commiserate you on the time you have spent at this school; if you are, I am glad to extend to you the most hearty congratulations and good wishes on the completion of your course here, and the commencement of the larger and more serious work upon which you are about to enter.

C. STUART GAGER BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN

LETTER ON THE SMITHSONIAN
INSTITUTION1

BY THE LATE PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ

Addressed to the Honorable Charles W. Upham Dear Sir,-Every scientific man in this country has been watching with intense interest the proceedings of the Smithsonian Institution ever since its foundation, satisfied, as all must be, that upon its prosperity the progress of science in America in a very great measure depends. The controversies which have been lately carried on respecting the management of the institution have increased the solicitude of its friends with regard to its future prospects in a degree which can hardly be realized by those who are not immediately connected with the cause of science.

As a foreigner, who has enjoyed but for a few years the privilege of adding his small share to support the powerful impulse which scientific investigations have lately received from those who are the native representatives of science in America, I have thus far abstained from taking any part in this discussion, for fear of being charged with meddling with matters in which I have no concern. There is, however, one feature of the institution itself, which may, I trust, justify the step 1 From Canadian Journal, Vol. III., 1854 and 1855, pp. 216-217, in the April number for 1855. containing Proceedings of the Canadian Institute. Communicated by Dr. Otto Klotz, Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, Canada.

I have taken in addressing you upon this subject as the chairman of the committee elected by the House of Representatives to investigate the proceedings of that establishment.

With the exception of a few indirect allusions, I do not see that any reference is made in the discussion now going on to the indisputable fact that the Smithsonian Institution is not an American institution. It was originated by the liberality of a high-minded English gentleman, intrusting his fortune to the United States to found in Washington an institution to increase and diffuse knowledge among men. America, in accepting the trust, has obtained the exclusive management of the most important and the most richly endowed scientific institution in the world: but it is at the same time responsible to the scientific world at large for the successful prosecution of the object of the trust, which is to increase and diffuse knowledge among men.

Were it not for this universal character of the institution, I would not think it becoming in me to offer any suggestion with regard to it. As it is, I feel a double interest in its prosperity in the first place, as an institution designed to foster the process of science at large, and without reference to nationalities or local interests, and next, as more immediately connected with the advancement of science in the country of my adoption.

The votaries of science may differ in their views about the best means of advancing science, according to the progress they have themselves made in its prosecution; but there is one standard of appreciation which can not fail to guide rightly those who would form a candid opinion about it. I mean the lives of those who have most extensively contributed in enlarging the boundaries of knowledge.

There are two individuals who may, without qualification, be considered the most prominent scientific men of the nineteenth century— Cuvier and Humboldt. By what means have they given such powerful impulse to science? How have they succeeded not only in increasing the amount of knowledge of their age, but also in founding new branches of science? It is by their own publications and by aiding

in the publications of others; by making large collections of specimens and other scientific apparatus, and not by the accumulation of large libraries. Humboldt never owned a book, not even a copy of his own works, as I know from his own lips. "He was too poor," he once said to me, "to secure a copy of them"; and all the works he receives constantly from his scientific friends are distributed by him to needy students.

Again, there is hardly a scientific man living on the continent of Europe, who is not indebted to him for some recommendations in the proper quarter for assistance in the publication of their works. I mention more particularly these details about Humboldt, because he is happily still among the living, and his testimony may be asked in a matter of such deep importance to the real progress of science. But the same is equally true of the part Cuvier took in his day in promoting science. All his efforts were constantly turned towards increasing the collection of the Jardin des Plantes, and supporting the publication of original researches, giving himself the example of the most untiring activity in publishing his own.

In this connection, I ought not to omit mentioning a circumstance to which the United States owes the legacy of Smithson, which I happen accidentally to know, and which is much to the point, in reference to the controversy concerning the management of the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson had already made his will, and left his fortune to the Royal Society of London, when certain scientific papers were offered to that learned body for publication. Notwithstanding his efforts to have them published in their transactions, they were refused; upon which he changed his will and made his bequest to the United States. It would be easy to collect in London more minute information upon this occurrence and, should it appear desirable, I think I could put the committee in the way of learning all the circumstances. Nothing seems to me to indicate more plainly what were the testator's views respecting the best means of promoting science than this fact.

I will not deny the great importance of libraries, and no one has felt more keenly the want of an extensive scientific library than I since I have been in the United States; but, after all, libraries are only tools of a secondary value to those who are really endowed by nature with the power of making original researches, and thus increasing knowledge among men. And though the absence or deficiency of libraries is nowhere so deeply felt as in America, the application of the funds of the Smithsonian Institution to the formation of a library, beyond the requirements of the daily progress of science, would only be, in my humble opinion a perversion of the real object of the trust, inasmuch as it would tend to secure facilities only to the comparatively small number of American students who may have the time and means to visit Washington when they wish to consult a library. Such an application of the funds would in fact lessen the ability of the Smithsonian Institution to accomplish its great object (which is declared by its founder to be the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men) to the full extent to which they may be spent towards increasing unduly the library.

Moreover, American students have a just claim upon their own country for such local facilities as the accumulation of books affords.

If I am allowed, in conclusion, to state my personal impression respecting the management of the institution thus far, I would only express my concurrence with the plan of active operations adopted by the regents, which has led to the publication of a series of volumes, equal in scientific value to any production of the same kind issued by learned societies anywhere.

The distribution of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge has already carried the name of the Institution to all parts of the civilized world, and conveyed with them such evidence of the intellectual activity of America as challenges everywhere admiration: a result which could hardly be obtained by applying the resources of the institution to other

purposes.