78 31ississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



representing nor being acquainted with horticulture to any great extent, to 

 attempt to speak at length on this subject. 



When I read the account of your proceedings yesterda\', I noticed a letter 

 stating that the writer could only be ijrevented from being jiresent by his 

 fourscore and five years. I was deeply impressed by the reading of that 

 touching letter, ^yhat may we not expect will be the influence on the youth? 

 Horticulture not only affects the homes of the living, but it has its touching 

 influences in the homes of the dead. Mr. President, and gentlemen dele- 

 • gates, bear in mind, I speak this welcome in behalf of Kansas City and the 

 State Society. 



To which President Earle responded briefly as follows: " I will 

 only say that this entire society receives the welcome in the same 

 spirit in which it is extended. I will not say more, as I will now 

 read my address, which will take your attention for some time. It 

 was deferred yesterday because so many were still on the road." 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 

 Ladies and Gentlemen — Members of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society : 



I am most happy to greet you at this fifth meeting of our Society. Four 

 times before this have Ave convened in the four greatest cities of this great 

 valley — in St. Louis, in Cincinnati, in Chicago, and in New Orleans. And 

 now we salute each other on the banks of the noble Missouri ; where but a 

 generation since was the border-land of civilization ; where now stands this 

 most wonderful young city of the world. 



Last winter we were received with enthusiastic hospitality on the borders 

 of the gulf of Mexico in the commercial metropolis of the South, and held a 

 memorable meeting in that quaint and beautiful city. To-day, we assemble 

 a thousand miles distant from that city of orange orchards aud winter gar- 

 dens, and yet a thousand miles this side the limits of our Society's territory, 

 to meet this heartiest of welcomes from the citizens and horticulturists of 

 the robust and energetic metropolis of the plains. 



These simple facts will suggest to you, my friends, something of the 

 grandeur of the field which our organization has for its labors, and within 

 which we hope to contribute something toward making the world more 

 beautiful, and for the elevation of mankind. And throughout all this impe- 

 rial t<'rritory, which stretches from the Rockies to the Alloghanies, from the 

 frozen zone to ihc tropical gulf, men are working as inen never have worked 

 before during all the ages of human history, to cliange the face of natiu'e; to 

 develop the wonderful resources of soil and mine, and to upbuild the great 

 structures of a restless and an aml)itiou8 civilization. They are destroying 

 the forests and ))lanting the ]ilains, and in a thousand ways are revolution- 

 izing the conditions and the problems of human society. 



