PresidenVs Annual Address. 27 



do. If we have not accomplished as much as we hoped in some directions, 

 I trust you will not charge the failure to any lack of comprehension of the 

 difficulties of the task, or of energy in attempting to surmount the many 

 obstacles to success. I believe your servants have worked faithfully, and I 

 hope you will consider that they have worked intelligently, to promote this 

 great enterprise. At any rate some of us have labored unceasingly for more 

 than a year to bring together an exhibition that would do some honor to 

 American horticulture 



I wish here to give full and just credit to the Board of Management, and 

 •especially to the Director General of this Exposition, for the very liberal 

 manner in which they have met the views and provided for the needs of 

 this horticultural department. They have authorized a premium list of 

 unprecedented liberality and comprehensiveness, aggregating ten times as 

 much as was ever before offered for similar products; they have erected the 

 largest and finest horticultural building in the world for our exhibition ; 

 they sent one of the most eminent horticulturists of the age as commissioner 

 for this exhibition to foreign countries; they have expended large sums in 

 transforming what was but a few months since a wilderness of weeds, full of 

 pitfalls and morasses, into an incomplete but yet comfortable and promising 

 park ; and they have in all ways shown an appreciation of the value of hor- 

 ticulture as a great factor in the nation's civilization, which should entitle 

 them to the lasting gratitude of all friends of that cause. 



And yet, with all these advantages in our favor, we have not accomplished 

 quite as much as we hoped for. We have not been able to induce the lead- 

 ing fruit and plant growers of some of our States to contribute to our 

 exhibits. There are many men and firms who have grown wealthy upon 

 the patronage of the horticultural public, who yet have not seen it their 

 duty to help make more complete this first attempt at an international 

 exhibition of horticulture. These gentlemen will perhaps grow more 

 liberal when they grow more wise. And then some of our exhibits from 

 abroad have been greatly damaged, and others have failed to reach us en- 

 tirely, owing to embarrassing detentions in our custom houses. And again, 

 very many important exhibits which were promised to our foreign commis- 

 sion appear to have never been sent at all. 



But notwithstanding all of these drawbacks, which we should have ex- 

 pected, I presume we are able to offer you to-day a horticultural exhibition 

 which, for extent, variety, and instructiveness, has never before been equaled 

 in the world. We have to-day exhibits of fruits or plants, or both, from 

 thirty-six American States and Territories, from eleven foreign nations, and 

 from three foreign provinces, in all from just fifty States and countries ; and 

 exhibits are promised and expected, later in the season, from several other 

 countries. We have on our tables to day nearly 20,000 plates of fruit, repre- 

 senting all kinds of soil and all sorts of climates, from the rich jungles of 

 Nicaragua to the mountains of Colorado and Idaho, or the cold northern 

 plains of Quebec ; from the semi-tropic orchards of Florida to the rich val- 



