WINTER MEETING. 205 



find the timber being cut off our lands and the virgin soil at once 

 planted to orchards, and we feel sure that these orchards will occupy 

 the same position that our orchards did 40 years ago. 



A new idea seems to have taken possession of oar Western men, 

 and that is that the orchard should have all the fertility the land af- 

 fords, and that it should not be robbed by continual cropping. We 

 find many of our fruit-men studying intelligently the newer varieties^ 

 watching closely the development of the fungus diseases, acquainting 

 themselves with the habits of the insect foes, experimenting with all 

 that is new, old, good, bad or indifferent. In fact, the horticulturist of 

 Missouri is trying to step upon a higher plane of thought or labor 

 than that wholly devoted to manual labor or drudgery. 



You will find our large commercial orchardists paying as strict at- 

 tention to their business enterprise as any merchant, lawyer, mechanic 

 or manufacturer can possibly do to his work. He is taking it up as a 

 business enterprise, and is following it in a businesslike way, and not 

 as a side issue, and the results are justifying this expenditure of time, 

 labor, brains and money. What the result of this systematic plan of 

 orchard-growing will be we can only partially comprehend now ; but 

 we may be sure that this organized, systematic, intelligent, energetic, 

 enthusiastic plan of orchard and fruit-growing will result in increased 

 knowledge, positive results, and be the means of making our business 

 a true " science of horticulture," of which it does not now deserve the 

 name. 



Some practical results have been developed in these last three 

 seasons of severe trial and failure. We have seen, even during this 

 year, apple-orchards that have paid their owners as high as $200 per 

 f.cre, and very many of them that have paid from |oO to $100 per acre. 

 You can find peach orchards that paid last year, all the way from $60 

 to $300 per acre. While these higher figures are the exception and 

 not the rule, yet they show what can be done and what has been done 

 in many locations. 



Why should we not expect results, and especially improvement 

 and increased knowledge, when we have such thinkers and workers as 

 Samuel Miller, Herman Jaeger, Mary E. Murtfeldt, Jacob Kommel in 

 Missouri, and M. G. Kern, B. T. Galloway and C. V. Riley who have got 

 away from Missouri. I have to add another reason why we should ex- 

 pect results and a sure means of development, and that is, the work 

 of the Missouri State Horticultural Society and its band of workers, 

 who are working as a unit for the advancement of this cause all 

 over our State, and sending out valuable knowledge far and wide. 



