THE Society of American Florists has a high ideal set before it in the address of the retiring president. The Society should be more than a trade organization. Its objects are "not only to instruct its members in their daily avocations, but to educate the masses in horticulture by widening and deepening an interest in our profession, by increasing our membership, active and honorary, until we embrace all the leading men of the country who are interested in the various callings of horticulture, all men engaged in scientific research tending to advance the profession, the formation of kindred associations, encouraging exhibitions of plants and flowers, by bringing into closer relations the retail dealer with the grower and wholesale dealer".

All this calls for general education and culture, and it demands a more wide-spread appreciation of ornamental gardening. We have not yet come to that stage in this country when gardening is in general appreciated as a work of art. Ornamental gardening is usually judged solely by its gross form and color. Gardeners must get out of old ruts. They must put spirit and expression into their work. But this means that the gardener must be educated.

President Jordan sees two general ways of elevating the garden and the gardener. Cities are growing, and the country is taking on a better life. Gardening is adapted to all conditions, "and it is committed to our hands to extend our parks and boulevards far into the country until city is linked to city, and the most rural districts will feel the vitalizing forces of plants and flowers." Those who are benefitted by institutions of learning "are very few compared with the great mass of people that frequent our parks and public grounds to take object-lessons, where young and old, rich and poor, learned and illiterate meet on one common level to drink in nature's best gifts to man.'* Yet in the educational institutions a higher and more symmetrical culture can be attained. President Jordan again calls the attention of the Society to the importance of some school training for the florist. "Science shows us how the things we have to deal with in our homeliest toil connect us (if we but understand the linking) to what is most elevating in man's thoughts and hopes.

It helps supply that food for the mind, without which we starve in drudgery, but by the strength of which we rise to a higher plane of life".

The education problem has long been a vexed question among the florists, and there is yet no appearance of a solution of it. Members are divided by conflicting aims, and there has been no one with a practicable and clear-cut proposition who could lead the organization to any definite action. Many are making the vital mistake of supposing that the first requisite in a florists, school is a corps of florists to direct it. The first requisite in any school is men who can teach. When it so happens thas the teacher is also a successful grower, the highest ideal is attained. But the first requirement of any man who imparts instruction is ability to fire the enthusiasm of his students. So it often happens that the most successful teachers are distanced by their pupils. President Jordan thinks that wealthy men could be induced to endow florists' schools, and no doubt they will do so as soon as they feel assured that a sufficient demand and interest exists. But some of the land-grant colleges would no doubt take up this work actively if the florists should once present a definite plan or request to them.

Nothing can be accomplished without united and positive action, and the apparent lack of interest in the discussion which followed President Jordan's address to the Society at Boston seems to indicate that the time is not yet ripe for florists' schools.