616 Transactions op the 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



Delivered by J. A. Hosmer, Esq., of Stockton 



Mr, President, Members of the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Society, 

 Ladies and Gentlemen: 



Another agricultural year is closed. In pursuance of a time honored 

 custom, the farmers of the garden and granary of California — the great 

 San Joaquin Valley — have thronged to their business center to survey 

 the progress of their labors, and ascertain wherein such advancement 

 can be made as to render the next more fruitful than the past year. 



I have been honored with an invitation from the Directors of the San 

 Joaquin Valley Agricultural Society to address you on this occasion. 

 The subject is new to me, but if in the remarks I have to offer, I shall 

 be fortunate enough to say anything that will encourage our agricul- 

 turists in their labors, I shall have accomplished all that I expect. 



Little thought the Hon. Mablon Dickerson, when opposing legislation 

 for Oregon and the navigation of the Columbia in the United States 

 Senate in eighteen hundred and twenty-five, because of their remoteness, 

 that the Pacific Coast would be the commercial mart it is to-day. Lit- 

 tle dreamed the men of Mexico, who signed the treaty of Guadalupe 

 Hidalgo, of the richness and productiveness of the soil they were con- 

 signing to the United States. And the swarms of gold hunters, who 

 came here to make and depart with speedily acquired fortunes, would 

 have deemed you madmen had you told them that before the first 

 quarter of a century bad passed, the grain districts of the old and new 

 world would have been surpassed in their annual production by that of 

 your great valley. 



ANTIQUITY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Agriculture in some form has existed ever since the expulsion from 

 Eden. The yearly journeys to Egypt from the interior countries of 

 Asia, to purchase corn and other products, are familiar history to all 

 juvenile students. Greece and Eome boasted of a cultivated agriculture 

 during their golden day, and produced theorists who devoted their 

 exclusive attention to the development of it as a science. The people 

 of the Middle Ages, though discarding the useful arts, and sacrificing 

 learning at the shrine of conquest and bloodshed, forgot not to till the 

 soil, and win for themselves a subsistence. 



IMPROVEMENTS IN AGRICULTURE. 



Improvement in agriculture has kept pace with the general progress 

 of mankind. The past century, through the labors of Lord Karnes, Sir 



