Presidenf s Annual Address. 83 



the dreaded " yellows," except by the destruction of the property itself. The 

 man has no choice but surrender. For this serious trouble we must wait 

 for scientific research to give us a remedy. The strawberry grower of South- 

 ern Illinois, having overcome all the common enemies to his crop, and car- 

 ried it forward to within a week or two of profitable harvest, suddenly finds 

 his promising acres in complete possession of myriads of a destructive little 

 insect too insignificant to have attracted his attention. The strawberry 

 grower is powerless before these trifling bugs ; his crop is taken and he has 

 plenty of time to consider how little he is master of his own field. The pear 

 grower in any and all of these states knows varieties for all tastes and sea- 

 sons, and as fascinating as the cheek of beauty ; and golden profits beckon 

 him to plant and prime and cultivate and wait, until within the very portals 

 of success, he sees that mysterious and irresistible pestilence we call " blight " 

 sweeping like a demon of destroying vengeance through the beautiful or- 

 chard, and the pear grower is as powerless as the other unfortunates when 

 he meets his enemy. 



But the world is hungry for peaches, and for strawberries, and for pears, 

 and we must grow ^hem and we shall grow them to meet this want. These 

 difficulties must be surmounted or avoided. 



The great fruit crop of this country and of the world is the apple. It can 

 be grown almost everywhere. It is the fruit of the palace and of the cot- 

 tage. Everybody wants ai^i^les. A general destruction of apples would be 

 a world's misfortune. And yet a single enemy destroys annually three- 

 fourths or more of the apples produced. These millions of bushels of blessed 

 God given apples, which should make millions of children happy and healthy ; 

 which should load every table on the continent with beautiful, fragrant food; 

 this fruit of Paradise ; this fruit of all civilized peoples, is given over to the 

 riot and destruction of loathsome worms ! But here is an evil that we un- 

 derstand. Here is an enemy whose ways are known. We know how to de- 

 stroy the apple moth; but most of us neglect to do it. Here is occasion for 

 the most zealous missionary work of horticultural societies. We have first 

 to 'convert our own members, and then to save the rest of the apple growers. 

 With the means for the almost total extirpation of this evil within reach of 

 every orchardist, I do hope that the wasteful and sinful neglect which has 

 characterized our apple management will not long continue. 



I alluded to that disease of peach trees which baffles the peach grower 

 wherever it prevails. Luckily it does not afilict all sections of our country; 

 and there are large districts of peach growing territory where nothing hind- 

 ers the growing of good peach crops excejit that 



SUPREME LAZINESS OF MEN, 



Which permits the almost universal destruction of these crops by that omni- 

 present foe, the alert and versatile curculio. There is a district in this valley 

 as large as the German empire, where the climate and the soil are congenial 

 to peach trees, where no " yellows " ever invade, where crops could be had 



