a system of premiums, (but that we promised to say no more about.) Certainly, however, it is evident that the exhibition would have been vastly better if fewer artists had tried their hand at boquet-making, and had been satisfied to display their favors in simple collections of cut flowers, trusting for success rather to taste in selecting perfect blooms than to skill in arranging them for decorative uses. It requires no small experience, as well as natural talent, to compose a boquet or floral design of any sort, that shall betray superior merit; and a poor work of this sort looks worse in an exhibition than the most ordinary set of cut flowers ever brought out. It does not. lessen our confidence in this idea, that we found it so fully proven on this occasion in both its aspects. It is hardly necessary to say, in explanation, that we consider the selections of cut flowers shown to have been the head of the display by quite as much as placed the boquets and vases at the other extremity.

Yet after this long story of defects, we gladly pronounce the show of flowers to have been, on the whole, a very fine one. The Dahlias were superior; the Asters and Miscellaneous Flowers fair; the Pot Plants very good, and many of the Baskets and Dishes did credit to the exhibitors. Thanks to the propitious Autumn, our fears for the success of the Dahlia were dissipated, and this gorgeous old favorite was in its high place of honor as usual. Not only so; but more perfect. blooms have rarely come under our notice. Out of nearly six hundred flowers, we could hardly detect three score that showed decided imperfection. Would that the same could be said of the other members of the very brief series, that form the sole stock of a floral show in harvest-time. But the Asters, whose claims and capabilities are second only to the Dahlias, had nothing to recommend them in this case but color, which they showed in great perfection. Their form, in every instance noticed, was scraggy and unsymmetrical, proving a lack of skill in cultivation, or of taste in selection, and both alike fatal to success in exhibition. If half of those who

brought forward asters taken up from the border and potted— whole plants, flowers and all-had cut off these flowers and shown them, with a few more, in bottles on a small stand, they might have gained a very favorable judgment; as it was, they had their labor (ticket included) for their pains.

Take another example. The Ten Week Stock or Double Gilliflower, is a plant every way deserving of the attention of cultivators. It can be raised from seed at any time of year by proper management, and all through the summer and autumn with very little management at all. In color it rivals the Verbena, claiming, like that, every shade of red, purple and white, and only failing to afford the pure blues on one hand, and the decided yellows on the other. Beauty of form it eminently possesses; if not in the separate flower, at least in the cluster, and peculiarly so in the entire plant; while its hardiness is such, that we have known most resplendent boquets gathered from it on Thanksgiving Day.

Now had the pains that was laid out on inferior boquets, been taken to cut and exhibit this fine and worthy flower, we should have had a show finer by a large per centage; and perhaps have been obliged to complain of the scanty appropriation of our funds more loudly than we have now any conscience for. But so far from this, a single dish contained all the Gilliflowers on exhibition, so far as we discovered, and those, though very fine, were too scanty to properly represent a flower so fit for autumnal honors.

Let us revert to the Dahlia for illustration of another point. Personal rivalry, local feeling, or some other cause, (we neither know nor care what,) has created a pleasant competition in the production of this flower between the upper and lower parts of the County. Salem and Beverly on one side vie with Lawrence on the other; and the result is the display of blooms by both with hardly a flaw of character. Now however much a generous emulation may be praised, or a sectional jealousy deprecated, we yet rejoice in a good result from either; and something of the sort has given the Dahlia a perfection not yet

found in other flowers with us. But if we seek to encourage flower-growing, we must set up the like standard in the case of other plants, and welcome all laudable competition that tends to bring us up to it. There is no reason why our people should not be as anxious to show fine, perfect Asters, Phloxes, and Gilliflowers, as Dahlias; and we suspect a very little stimulus, if in the right direction, would suffice to wake them to this kind of enterprise.

Perhaps our worthy Essex farmers are not yet wholly rid of the idea that raising flowers is "women's work." So it is; but not the less that of men, by any means. Woman shines in every work of benevolence, but man honors himself in the giving of alms as much as she. Woman is lovely in connection with the education of the young; is not man equally well employed in the same field? Is not man as appropriately placed beside the sick-bed as his companion ?-though not, in this and all other cases, exerting the same gifts, yet those of equal usefulness and honor, according to the natural endowment of either. No, let not the farmer, nor the strong man of any occupation, indulge the false pride of pretending to be above the admiration of flowers. "But," he says, "flowers look charmingly, but have no usefulness; they do no good that I know of." Suppose it is so; how much good does the carmine do, that you love to see mantling your Red Astracans as well as any one? Is the Baldwin better for its ruby coat, or the Maiden-Blush for the glow that has borrowed it a name from the loveliest of all things? Is the Bartlett more luscious for its gold, or the Tomato more wholesome for its fine crimson? But the plainest farmer loves all these better for their beautiful hues, and he knows it, and cannot help it, and still those hues have no more of utility about them than the tint or quilling of an Aster. There is just as fine a vein of enjoyment in the farmer's nature as in any man's; nay, he, of all men, is the one to have enjoyment—a full, deep, overflowing cup of it, for his physical system is aptest to be tuned to the true natural harmony, vigorous and strong, and beauty ought to rise on his

vision, not in pale, diluted colors, but glorious and warm as a haymaker's sunshine.

The flower beds ought to be as inseparable from the farm as the barn or the muck-heap. The kinds we have named ought always to be there, as well as many others. The greenhouse may or may not be added; but the flowers that do not need its shelter should never be excluded from the farmer's home. And a moment's thought will show us that this leaves a list by no means poor; the Crocus, Tulip, and all the Lilies nearly, with the Crown Imperial and the Hyacinth, the Primrose and Polyanthus, the Roses and Pinks of countless kinds, the Dahlias and Asters and Chrysanthemums and Gladioluses, and then Phloxes and Gilliflowers of all sorts, not to mention many more. We only speak of such as need no care in winter, beyond the saving of seed, or the storing of bulbs just out of the way of frost. Likewise they are all, in some sense, florists flowers, such as a wholesome pride and emulation may be felt in raising for exhibition.

Nor is the production of such beautiful blooms a process of artificializing and monster-making, as some have labored to believe. The more thoroughly single a Tulip is, and the more perfectly every organ is formed, the better is the flower, by the judgment of the best florists. The same is true of the Sweet William and Pansy and Primrose. Phloxes, Gladioluses and Lilies are never double; Hyacinths are little better for being so, while Asters produce nearly as good seed when they are double, and cannot, therefore, be much worse. But there is no need to argue this. Nobody can say much about artificializing flowers who raises Giant Rhubarb, Mammoth Squashes, or Pears on quince roots whose life no company would insure at any premium. The growing of lovely and perfectly formed flowers is as much in harmony with nature as any of the operations of culture. Man is a worker of changes in everything; he has, so to express it, made the Apple, Peach and Pear; he has made the Potato and the dozen of roots that we think so much of; and shall we call him any more a fool because he

has doubled the Rose and the Chrysanthemum to make them. feed more vigorously the hungry life within. Surely not; let the Farmer cultivate flowers; let him raise the very best he can, and show them for his own credit, and to excite a generous competition in the hearts of his brethren. They will be like a red cheek on the sunny side of his own mellow harvest; like the bloom on the features of his own home-fed daughters, which enhances and testifies their worth, though it may not cause it. In their mute eloquence, they shall speak to him of a life higher than the mere flitting present; for his full barn and bin only suggest the stern fact of ever-returning hunger, but these can minister to a want that bread cannot satisfy, hinting still at the painless experience of an immortal rest, from which they seem like lovely premonitors, always murmuring in the ear of him who notes them,

"Oh pray believe that angels, from those blue dominions Brought us in their white laps down, twixt their purple pinions."

A succinct statement of the gratuities awarded by your Committee will close this report :

I. CUT FLOWERS.

No. 112. 237 Dahlias-80 varieties. J. C. Hoadley, Law

rence.

This was, apparently, the same collection that has led our exhibition so many years, hitherto, we believe, hailing from the premises of C. S. Storrow, Esq. The change in name we know nothing about; the flowers were remarkably perfect in form, and in color, possessed great delicacy, but not so much of strength or variety. Rather the best entry, on the

whole.

No. 68. 280 Dahlias.

Bosson & Glover, Salem.

$4

A very fine stand, and remarkably well shown. We found a good many centered and imperfect blooms, but the range of