Nor plants there, and native climbers yonder, in the harmony of a taste so refined that our cottages wore the grace and breathed the sweetness of our old-time Eastern home. did he confine his wise counsel to pansies and primroses and grasses and dried flowers and beautiful trees; it was he who taught us how best to plant and tend our gardens and market the products, and make our conservatories pay grateful tribute to our love of the beautiful, and to our love for a comfortable family treasury. There was so much freshness, and cheer, and wisdom in his visits, that he seemed to us as one of his perennial plants, the greenness of whose leaves and the beauty of whose flowers made summer the whole year round, yet his leaf has withered and his fruit has failed. Alas! The cutting blasts of death penetrate every defense, and the rarest plants fare as the commonest. But, in a truer sense, his leaf has not withered, his fruit has not failed. The ten thousand homes he has benefited, and the thrice ten thousand hearts he has cheered, are the new forms of his undying life. Disgusted with its extremes, hypocritical censors have sneered at the marvelous aspiration of every circle of society after grace and harmony, as the "aesthetic craze." Blessed craze! That seeks to drape deformity in the robes of beauty; to make poverty itself less repulsive; and put thought and taste and sweet simplicity in dress and dwelling, in garden and grange, to make the desert blossom as the rose and the solitary places to be glad, the extent to which the public taste has been cultivated is unexampled. The designs of the cheapest prints are high art, and the advertising cards of the green-grocer worthy of preservation in our picture albums. And what is beauty but the inarticulate speech of Deity? What its nobler forms but the veiled outlines of that divine face we cannot see with open eye and live? To the cultivation of this taste James Vick has largely contributed—more largely than any one imagines who has not thoughtfully considered that flowers are for this earth, the higher, the absolute expression of beauty. Therefore, Mr. President, for these reasons, I desire to recommend the adoption of the resolutions of respect. As a man, as a Christian, as a worker among men, as a writer, as a teacher, as an artist in flowers, as a master in horticulture, he deserves even higher encomiums than the resolutions propose. "Dead, with the odor of flowers about him, A motion was carried that the Secretary be instructed to forward a copy of the foregoing resolutions, and the response thereto, to the wife of Mr. Berry and to the son of the late James Vick. Prof. Blount, of the State Agricultural College, read a paper on "Insects: Friends and Foes." (This paper being illustrated it is found impracticable to insert it here.SECRETARY.) Adjourned to 10 o'clock a. m., 13th instant. DENVER, January 13 MORNING SESSION. The minutes of yesterday's meeting were read and approved. AN ESSAY ON WEEDS: NOXIOUS AND OTHERWISE. BY PROF. A. E. BLOUNT, OF COLORADO STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, WAS THEN READ: Weeds are a necessary evil. Necessary, because we, as people, have not force and time enough, we think, to eradicate them or check their growth. We have no law that compels us to arrest or exterminate them, consequently they have become so abundant that our land and our crops are rapidly deteriorating. Weeds are of such a nature that they practice a much more perfect system of rotation than we do. One kind and then another comes in. They somehow keep up the fertility of the soil sufficiently to produce magnificent crops every season. It is absolutely essential to good crops for the farmer, gardener, florist and orchardist to acquire an exact knowledge of the plants that immediately concern them. They should be able to designate and treat all weeds, both useful and noxious, according to their value and worthlessness. I have made several very careful estimates of how much of our time and labor it requires to "keep weeds down" in the various departments of experimental work, as well as in the field. In 1875 I prepared exactly one square acre for experimental wheat. The preparation of the soil, $3.50, the seed, seeding, $1.50, and harvesting $2.00, cost me exactly $7.00. Threshing at 5 cents, 67 17-60 bushels, $3.35; cultivation to keep weeds down, $3.60. Total, $13.95. The expense of keeping the weeds down amounts to nearly one-third of the labor. The same year I sowed twenty acres at a cost of $6.50 per acre. Threshing at 5 cents, 28 bushels, $1.40; cost of cultivation, $2.10. Total, $10.00—$2.10 cost of keeping weeds down, nearly onefourth of labor. This was on clover soil, where the weeds did not grow very luxuriantly. on Another experiment of ten acres the following year, corn stubble, where the weeds had asserted their authority and left an inheritance of millions of their kind, cost per acre $7.10; threshing 5 cents, 48 bushels, $2.40; cultivation, $2.35. Total, $11.85-$2.35 cost of keeping weeds down, a little over one-fourth. I have no statistics showing the per cent of our labor in keeping the weeds down in corn, cabbage, beets, nor onions, which of course must be greater in proportion to the labor of putting them in and harvesting. Such experiments show conclusively that weeds are a very serious obstacle and an expensive luxury. I have made in these experiments no allowance for the benefit the crop receives from stirring the soil in the process of killing the weeds. According to these figures, and the experience of all observing men, the expense incurred in ridding our crops of noxious weeds every year cannot be less than 20 to 25 per cent of all our labor, to say nothing of the damage those that are left do to our crops. Our labor, then, is a constant struggle on the one hand to make one kind of plants grow, on the other to keep another kind from growing. We are interested in two things, viz., how the weeds get in and how to get them out. Some years since Prof. Buckman discovered in one pint of clover seeds 12,600 weed seeds, one pint of Red clover seed 39,440, two pints of Dutch clover seed 95,960. This is only one or two of thousands of experiments on record where weed seeds are obtained. This may show from where and how so many different kinds get into our crops. How to get them out concerns us most just now. The hoe is a very remarkable implement. Have you ever seen one? Well, weeds cannot be destroyed by the hoe. It will do much, but not enough-early and late cultivation is the surest remedy. The distinction we make between flowers, useful plants, herbs and weeds is very marked, so far as our knowledge of their real value, usefulness and beauty extend. Any homely plant that is not noticeable for the beauty of its flowers nor entitled to respect by a reputation for medical or other useful qualities is a weed. In the agricultural sense it is an intrusive and unwelcome individual, that persists in growing where it is not wanted. "It is a plant out of place." But few weeds are indigenous to our country or State. Almost all have been imported from other countries. We have weeds in our cultivated lands, grain fields, pastures, waste places, and weeds everywhere-in round numbers, among 1,200 plants of different kinds, fifty-four belong to cultivated lands, grain fields and pastures, seventy-six to waste places. Only 130 are found in our country, 110 of which were introduced from foreign countries, twenty being native. Of fifty-four found in cultivated land, forty-two are from Europe, one from Central America, and eleven native. All these weeds are divided into different classes, with all kinds of nanies, common and technical, the latter of which I shall discard, except so far as they serve to explain. Weeds, like flies and mosquitoes, seem to be useless and so obtrusive that they are a nuisance-a pest, the farmer's perpetual barrier to average crops, the gardener's vexatious impediment, the florist's continual annoyance; they are unsightly, offensive, injurious and worthless intruders. Although this list by name is not long, their multiplicity is legion. I shall name noxious weeds before I am done whose powers of reproduction are so great that over 6,000,000 seeds from one ripen annually-the more noxious, the more prolific-the more prolific, the more hurtful— the more hurtful, the less our crops, and the more vigilance is required to keep them in subjection. June 22, a single square foot of ground in our orchard, that had been plowed and harrowed this season, was found to contain 356 growing plants, comprising seven distinct species, not counting grasses or clovers. At the same date our forage plat contained twenty-four species of weeds, our lawn thirteen species, our fields thirty species, and our garden twenty-three species. In the discussion of this subject I shall call your attention to the most of the injurious weeds that infest fields, gardens and ditches, as well as their influence upon our crops. Taking the order in which most botanists have classed plants, I will notice first those that have flowers. June 21, an average plant of Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) contained about 1,000 pods, each pod at least |