8 Mi.-<sissij)j)i Vdlliii Hordcultaral Society. 



Inasimich as local and county societies do not fully meet the desires of the 

 horticulturists of any of our States, but we must have organizations which 

 bring the fruit growers, florists, gardeners and foresters of entire States into 

 more intimate acquaintiince and relationships, so it seems that the more 

 comi)rehensive needs of a great community of States can not be fully an- 

 swered except by an organization which shall bring us all together in an 

 annual congress, for deliberation as to methods and measures, for the discus- 

 sion of varieties and principles, and to hear the latest word of science and the 

 best suggestions of art concerning this noble business of our lives. 



The liorticultural products which enter into the various channels of com- 

 merce in this Mississippi valley aggregate not less than lifty millions of dol- 

 lars of annual value ; while the similar products which pass into immediate 

 domestic use, of which no account is ever kept, are supposed to fully equal 

 this amount. When we consider these vast financial interests, which are 

 subject, more or less, to the influence of horticultural bodies — which have 

 indeed been largely stimulated and developed by the action of these socie- 

 ties—and when we reflect upon the still more vital and weighty questions 

 of the esthetic and moral influences of horticulture upon the daily life and 

 the homes of thirty millions of peojile in this valley of ours, we shall not dis- 

 jjarage the importance of any organized efltbrt to render these great interests 

 more secure, and these beneficent influences more effective. 



When we climb to a mountain top and enlarge the horizon of our view, 

 we get a better idea of the relations of the natural features of the country 

 around us ; we see hill and valley, lake and stream, forest and field, all blend- 

 ing into one harmonious landscape. So, when our minds are uplifted to 

 some plane of loftier contemplation of the wide relations of our diversified 

 horticulture, we shall see the lines of our interest reaching out to the utmost 

 boundary of the continent, and we shall find that we are bound one to an- 

 other, man to man, and State to State, in an intimate business sympathy, as 

 well as in the reciprocity of social relations or the companionshiiD of great 

 ideas. We are engaged not alone in growing apples and strawberries for the 

 market, trees for the orchard, or forests for the lumber there is in them. 

 We have the weightier engagement of making a million homes beautiful, 

 and so more joyful ; of ornamenting towns, and roadsides, and fields ; of 

 planting groves on treeless plains; of planting flowers in naked dooryards — 

 in a word, of building up the outward forms, and so the inward sjiirit of a 

 noble civilization. That an organization embracing hundreds of the fore- 

 most minds in our profession, coming together yearly from all these States 

 for conference, regarding the multitude of old and new questions ever seek- 

 ing an answer, can fail to be usehd in a large way, I can not believe. Hence 

 I think we need such an organization in addition to all others of a kindred 

 nature, which we now have; and I believe we have in this Mississippi Valley 

 Society the organization which we need; and that it should be altogether 

 liberal, far-reaching and national, even continental, in the spirit of its man- 

 agement, if not in its name. 



