€8 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



AN ADDRESS. 



BY HON. HENRY F. THOMAS OF ALLEGAN. 



President Moreill introduced the Hon. H. F. Thomas, member of con- 

 gress from the fourth district of Michigan, who made the following 

 address, which was very heartily applauded at its close: 



Gentlemen of the Society: — I am happy to be with you for two 

 special reasons. In the first place, you represent an industry which in 

 its material benefits to society, as well as in its ennobling influences upon 

 character, places it at once in the first rank of human occupations. Chem- 

 ical analyses and medical experience demonstrate that fruits and grains 

 are the normal food of man. It is worthy of note that the Lord God 

 planted in the center of Eden not a slaughter-house but an orchard. It 

 was a tradition among the Greeks that in the golden age mankind lived on 

 acorns while the gods lived on walnuts. Our historical scripture informs 

 us that in the beginning man was given the freedom of the garden, but 

 the apples were reserved for the gods. 



In the next place, you represent the leading industry of the district 

 which I have the honor to represent. The successful culture of fruit 

 depends upon a peculiarity of soil, atmosphere, and temperature which 

 prevails in a wonderful manner in the southwestern counties of Michigan. 

 Each of the four seasons furnishes those characteristic conditions without 

 which our most delicious fruits would never reach perfection. The same 

 apple grown in Van Buren county, commanding the highest price in the 

 Chicago market for its flavor and richness, planted on the Pacific coast in 

 the orange belt is woody and tasteless. The prevailing western winds, 

 tempered by the waters of lake Michigan, over which they sweep, shield 

 us from the late and early frost. And here, where but a generation ago 

 dense forests prevailed, filled with wild beasts and Indians, today -the 

 entire country from the lake to the headwaters of the St. Joseph, and from 

 the Grand river to the Indiana line, displays an unbroken series of gardens, 

 orchards, and grain fields that would have excited the envy of the Pha- 

 raohs in the palmiest days of Egypt and the Nile. 



Pomology as a science, we are told, dates from the reign of Henry 

 VIII. Since then a voluminous literature has sprung up on both sides of 

 the Atlantic. In order to understand its position among the sciences, let 

 me eay that it deals with but a segment of the vast circle of vegetable life. 

 Botany is the generic term embracing the entire circle, dealing with plants 

 only as to their normal condition, while horticulture deals with such spe- 

 cies and varieties as are produced by cultivation and exemplify nature as 

 elaborated and modified by the art of man. Pomology, then, is only a 

 department of horticulture, and has for its specific object the culture of 

 fruit as distinguished from vegetable or grain culture. 



But, after we have thus limited and located the subject, to advance 

 which your society was formed, we have still before us a vast field of inquiry 

 which the short years of a lifetime will not suffice to master. Downing, 



