Professor Reagan, of Depauw University at Greencastle, Indiana, recently gave a pleasant paper before the Illinois Horticultural Society, on the methods pursued by him in teaching, as Professor of Horticulture. We do not desire to be over-critical in remarks on this excellent paper; but it seems important to note that just what is and is not horticulture, has never been well distinguished in many quarters, and Prof. Reagan's paper is an illustration of this. And yet it is very well to get an exact definition of each. Prof. R. says:

"Horticulture is an art, not a science. It is a branch of agriculture and includes pomology, vegetable gardening, landscape gardening, floriculture, the propagation of trees and plants, or the nursery, forestry, etc.

"In aesthetic horticulture, the reward of our labors is in the pleasurable enjoyment we feel in its results. Our pleasure is proportioned to the degree of culture we enjoy. We designate those who follow horticultural pursuits from this standpoint as amateurs.

"Economic horticulture offers a more substantial reward in her golden fruits. While those who have a natural adaptability to the calling will usually succeed best, there are many who follow horticulture for the living they find therein".

We see from this the correctness of the position we have often assumed, that the Western idea of "horticulture" - horticulture as it is taught in agricultural colleges - is simply agriculture; or, as Prof. R. puts it, "a branch of agriculture." We have no objection to pomology, as it is generally understood, or market gardening, being classed with agriculture; but when it comes to landscape gardening, flower culture, or the general work of the florist or nurseryman, we should object to agriculture's claim to its possession, even as a "branch".

Nor do we think there is any necessity for getting over the difficulty Prof. R. evidently feels, when he incites agriculture to seize horticulture in this unceremonious way, by the division into "aesthetic horticulture" and "economic horticulture." There is no more reason for calling one who loves a garden, an esthetic horticulturist, than to call one who gets up a good fat hog regardless of cost, an aesthetic agriculturist.

The simple fact is, that agriculture is that art by which man seeks to get his living from the fields. There is little "amateur" business about it, as an amateur is here defined.

Horticulture is that art which seeks to beautify the land, and especially the land which surrounds our homes; to beautify it by plants, trees or flowers, or by so modifying the earth and commanding the water and the sky, that we may aid plants and flowers in their work. Indeed, as the very names imply, horticulture deals with the garden, and agriculture with the fields, and their work is wholly separate; of course there are times when the work of each encroaches on the other. There is water and there is dry land. But there are also swamps where it would be difficult to tell whether we should call the spot a lake or an island. We do not on this account permit the sea to call the land a branch of itself, nor the land to claim the sea as a part of itself. Neither can we allow the claim that horticulture is a branch of agriculture.