4 Mis.sissippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



Mr. Hudson, who is a practical farmer and fruit grower upon a 

 large scale, as well as an eminent counselor at law, addressed the 

 Society as follows : 



Gentlemen of the Mississippi VnUey Horticultural Societij : 



It was expected that the Governor of our State would have been present to 

 tender ycui a welcome and a greeting. Ho is, unfortunately, kept away by 

 public duties from the city at present, but I am charged by him in liis name, 

 on behalf of the State of Louisiana and of the city of New Orleans, to tender 

 you a cordial and hearty welcome. While expressing his deep regret for the 

 circumstances which kept him from participating in your deliberations, he 

 also desired me to say that, should his business engagements allow him, he 

 will try to be here before your adjournment to take some part in your delib- 

 erations. 



Gentlemen, in the absence of the President of the Fruit Growers' Associa- 

 tion (for 1 am only the Vice President), it devolves upon me, as his exponent, 

 to tender you a welcome; to welcome you here as the representatives of the 

 great Mississippi Valley, a valley which but a few years ago was considered a 

 very inconsiderable portion of these United States, but which, to-day, I think 

 I can say, without exaggeration, when we consider the system of its railway 

 and river connections, extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific slope. We 

 welcome you here as the exponants of an era of peace and prosperity, be- 

 cause it is only with peace and prosperity that art and agriculture can flour- 

 ish. We welcome you here as our neighbors — neighbors with whom identity 

 of labors and interests have made us acquainted long before we saw your 

 faces. 



Yours, gentlemen, is no ignoble mission. The history of the world teaches 

 us that in all ages, where civilization and culture has prospered, l^orticulture 

 has prospered. It is only when civilization has declined that the cultivation 

 of the soil has fallen into disrepute. In the jiroudest days of Greece and 

 Rome, when the poets sang, agriculture was at the acme of its prosperity. 

 Afterward, in the decline of the Roman Emjiire, it fell into disrepute, and it 

 was only when letters were revived by the orders of the monks in their 

 mountain caves that horticulture began again to prosper. Its revival com- 

 menced with the revival of letters in the Monastic Period. I said it was no 

 ignoble profession. Charlemagne, himself, was the first who recognized it a* 

 a noble one. 



And now, if we cast our eyes back over the last i'lliy years — 1 will say for 

 the last quarter of a century — and see the wonderful advances which have 

 been made in the United States, having learned all that the older countries of 

 Europe coulil teach us, we have in our turn become teachers. You are all 

 teachers; by your example, by the organization of such associations as this, 

 you are teaching the young men of the country the art of horticulture ; I say 

 art advisedly, for you are teaching them the best method of cultivating the 



