Reading of Letters. 115 



heartily the International Exposition in New Orleans, thus bringing together the 

 fruits not only of our own but other nations, and what is better still, the cultiva- 

 tors who produce them. Especially would I welcome the pomologists of foreign 

 niitions that we may compare fruits and the results of experience, and concert 

 measures for further improvement of them. This meeting will afibrd opportuni- 

 ties for the interchange of experience not often offered to the pomologist, and will 

 give another illustration of the power of association, that great agent which pro- 

 pels the engine of modern improvement, and to which we are mainly indebted for 

 the wonderful progress of fruit culture on this continent. Under this influence the 

 American Pomological Society, with the co-operation of kindred societies, has spread 

 its organization from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores, and now furnishes columns 

 in its catalogue of fruits adapted to more than fifty States, territories and districts 

 of our immense domain. To all this the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society 

 has contributed largely. God bless her. Marshall P. Wilder. 



I will now read you another coramunication from a gentleman 

 whom many of you know well, and who stands very high in horti- 

 culture, especially in forestry. I allude to Robert Douglas, of Il- 

 linois : 



Waukegan, III., January 1, 1884. 



Parker Ear le, Esq., President 3fissmippi Valley Horticultural Society : 



Mr Dear Sir — On my return home for the winter, I find your very kind letter 

 of two months ago, cordially inviting me to meet with you at Kansas City, and in 

 the event of my not being able to attend, that I would send a paper on the subject 

 of forestry. I very much regret that I can not make it convenient to meet with 

 you, and have no doubt that ere this time you have selected some one much more 

 competent to write a paper that will interest the whole membership of your asso- 

 ciation (which extends from the home of the glorious magnolia and live oak to the 

 habitat of the hardy box elder and cottonwood), so that, fortunately for you in 

 this case, "my loss will be your gain." 



There is one subject, however, in connection with forestry in which every mem- 

 ber of your Society is deeply interested. Even the planting of forest trees is a sec- 

 ondary matter, just at this time, in comparison with the subject to which I am 

 about to refer, and it is of more importance to the Mississippi valley than to any 

 other part of the country. 



It is well known by the members of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, 

 that if the Missouri river had come directly east from the Rocky Mountains in the 

 same manner as the Platte river, much of the land in your valley would be sub- 

 merged annually, and the terrible freshets that occur once in several years would 

 then be of yearly occurrence; but owing to the peculiar formation of the country, 

 the Missouri river trends northwardly to the border of the British Possessions, and 

 with the assistance of its tributaries, collecting the melting snows from the canons 

 of the mountains and carrying them around by this long, circuitous route, gives 

 the lower .Mississippi time to carry oft" the spring rains and melted snows from its 

 lower tributaries before it comes down from the north to form the June rise. 



The sources of the streams in the Rockv Mountains in Northern Montana have 



