it? Is nature fickle, or is man ignorant? Hubbard squashes long grown in Framingham crossed with Hubbard squashes long grown in Framingham may improve our seed; but Hubbard squashes long grown in Framingham crossed with Hubbard squashes newly introduced from Michigan will infuse new life into our offspring. This crossing with foreign stock of the same variety is of wonderful importance. It is a principle as boundless in its influence as the science of horticulture itself. Its importance may be gleaned from the fact that, in one of Darwin's experiments, the height of foreign crossed stock exceeded that of self-impregnated stock as 100 exceeds 52, and in fertility as 100 exceeds 3. The principle is of universal application, and all honor is due to Darwin who gave it to us. We do not know even the limits at which plants can be crossed. Sometimes varieties of the same species cannot be crossed, while some species, or reputed species, cross most readily with other species. In short, we know none of the general laws of cross-breeding, and still we believe that there are such laws. If we must learn some of these laws by experiment, we must also learn some from untrained nature. Our woods and fields are nature's garden. For ages the provident mother has been working with winds, and waters, and insects, with soils and climates, to breed up and to breed out her plants. She presents to us a grand puzzle. We do not know whence her plants have come or whither they are tending. We do not know how many are hybrids, born from the beautiful marriage of the insect to the flower, how many are the children of a peculiar clime, how many had their origin in a recent century, or in distant geological time. We are groping, interrogating. Every question which is answered in the woods and fields is answered for the garden. One spirit pervades vegetation. We can scarcely draw a line between cultivation as practised by man and cultivation as practised by nature. "Our art," said Shakespeare, "doth mend nature, change it, rather. The art itself is nature." We must get outside the garden fence as well as inside it. We must demolish the line between science and practice. This is the new horticulture. Deep down in nature's heart, beneath the thorns and perplexity, truths are hid which are vital to the farmer and gardener. Then do not discourage the pursuit of science, how ever much you may have been taught to regard it as opposed to practice. Science is practice. All so-called popular and useful science must be founded upon recondite facts and principles. The more we know of nature as nature, the more readily can we understand nature in the garden. We fail to catch the butterfly if we chase its irregular flight over the meadow, but the still hunt beside a thistle will bring us a captive. We cannot always reach the result at which we aim in experiment by a direct chase. We quite as often succeed by employing the still hunt of collateral evidence. The experimenter, then, must be a man of skill and learning in more directions than one. To reach the best results he must give his whole time and energies. The college professor, with his classes and his daily routine, can accomplish but little. We must delegate the work to the forthcoming experiment stations. We commonly look upon the science of botany as affording few avenues for practical research, while we applaud to the skies the results attained by chemistry and entomology; but chemistry often fails just where we expect the greatest results. The chemist finds turnips to be composed largely of water, and declares that they cannot be profitable food for stock, but the old Scotchman, whose turnip-fed sheep are sleek and robust, knows better. The potato is three fourths water, but it is indispensable, because it presents a digestible bulk to the stomach. Chemistry cannot analyze the grip of a man's stomach. Of all science under heaven there is none more eminently practical than this same botany. Many people don't know what botany is. They associate it with the school-girl accomplishment, which aims to chase down a few plants to their Latin names, and to press them in a little book, which is sacrilegiously styled an herbarium. This work bears no more relation to botany than does a party platform to party practice. Botany teaches, not only what a plant is, but what it does and how it does it. There is one botany of names and classification, another of cells, another of the plant as a living and growing organism, and another of mutual relations to all environAll these are given for the use of man, because he deals with plants in all their aspects. Even some botanists tell us that the botany of names and classifications - the botany of species — ments. is well-nigh finished, but when we have named and described every plant upon the face of the earth we must find out what a species is. The garden is a puzzle. Every leaf and flower is an interrogation point. And why is this true, when we know so many facts in horticulture? Our experiment has been conducted by our socalled practical rather than scientific men. The end and aim of experiment has been to secure more profitable products, rather than to disclose the principles which govern the production of such products. Had we reversed these motives of experiment, had we endeavored to find the why, our horticulture would be much in advance of its present position. Do you understand me? Do you understand that it is more necessary, at present, to discover laws than to strive directly for better fruits and vegetables? The difficulties in horticulture keep pace with the advancements in horticulture; the more we know the more we do not know. We shall experiment and investigate for a century; we shall solve the riddles of to-day; what, then, shall the horticulturist of the future investigate? We do not know what his puzzles will be, but we know that he will have puzzles. Science is ever new. It has no depth, no height, no boundaries; it stretches away into the infinite. We no sooner uncover one truth than we discover another. Man always anticipates his extremity of want, but never reaches it. Before we exhaust the coal and oil which mother earth has locked in her bosom, we grasp the electric current from the air. Before we shall exhaust our iron and copper we shall learn an easy method of extracting the silver from clay. Man shall always strive. Endeavor is a winsome goddess, who leads us through copses and along hazardous banks, but she never leads us to the ends of nature. The man who loves his garden, and who knows some of its secrets, is impatient for a fuller gratification. Some objects are near at hand and well defined, others are misty on the horizon. He tries to grasp them; they flit away like a pleasant dream; the prosaic garden fence is before him. THE BURTON STOCK CAR. ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS OF OUR TIMES. Ir is a strange fact in the remarkable achievements made by the railroads of this country for the comfort and convenience of human travelers, that prior to 1882 there had been little or no improvement in the mode of shipment of live stock, which forms an item of such vast importance. The same method prevailed until then as existed when railroads were first built; and a very small portion of the people know what this "method" has been, and how it has been improved by the humane invention of the company whose name heads this article. To present to our readers an adequate idea of the cruelty and extreme neglect to which cattle have been and are subjected while in transportation by the old method would be simply impossible. They are crowded into the car until not one more can be forced in, and then they are started on their journey. To say nothing of the violent bumping and knocking about they get while the train is "making up," the neglect to furnish proper food at proper intervals occasions intense suffering among the cattle, and it is only when the train is "side-tracked" for the convenience of the road, generally, that the animals receive food. Then the operation is but imperfectly performed, as they must be driven out to be watered and "jammed" back again; and should it not be convenient to those in charge to feed or water, it is left over till they stop again. The physical needs of cattle call for prompt and sufficient attention, when they are deprived of the free exercise of their own instincts in self-sustenance, and the amount of |