article of food, and we have bred a race of people that sees nothing to
admire in a good and well-grown potato tuber.

I now wish to take an excursion from the potato to the pumpkin. In all
the range of vegetable products, I doubt whether there is a more perfect
example of pleasing form, fine modelling, attractive texture and color,
and more bracing odor, than in a well-grown and ripe field pumpkin.
Place a pumpkin on your table; run your fingers down its smooth grooves;
trace the furrows to the poles; take note of its form; absorb its rich
color; get the tang of its fragrance. The roughness and ruggedness of
its leaves, the sharp-angled stem strongly set, make a foil that a
sculptor cannot improve. Then wonder how this marvellous thing was born
out of your garden soil through the medium of one small strand of a
succulent stem.

We all recognize the appeal of a bouquet of flowers, but we are unaware
that we may have a bouquet of fruits. We have given little attention to
arranging them, or any study of the kinds that consort well together,
nor have we receptacles in which effectively to display them. Yet,
apples and oranges and plums and grapes and nuts, and good melons and
cucumbers and peppers and carrots and onions, may be arranged into the
most artistic and satisfying combinations.

I would fall short of my obligation if I were to stop with the fruit of
the tree and say nothing about the tree or the plant itself. In our
haste for lawn trees of new kinds and from the uttermost parts, we
forget that a fruit-tree is ornamental and that it provides acceptable
shade. A full-grown apple-tree or pear-tree is one of the most
individual and picturesque of trees. The foliage is good, the blossoms
as handsome as those of fancy imported things, the fruits always
interesting, and the tree is reliable. Nothing is more interesting than
an orange tree, in the regions where it grows, with its shining and
evergreen leaves and its continuing flowers and fruits. The practice of
planting apples and pears and sweet cherries, and other fruit and nut
trees, for shade and adornment is much to be commended in certain
places.

But the point I wish specially to urge in this connection is the value
of many kinds of fruit-trees in real landscape work. We think of these
trees as single or separate specimens, but they may be used with good
result in mass planting, when it is desired to produce a given effect in
a large area or in one division