22 State Horticultural Society. 



of our gardens and fruit farms and orchards. Let us not be discouraged. 

 Let us bring our State to the front and not have it always so. We will 

 not always have black jacks and scrub oaks. So they can't tell the story 

 that our friend Nelson tells. He said he was riding along the road one 

 day and saw a man pointing a gun in a tree and he being a hunter had 

 respect and stopped his horse so that he might not scare the game. He 

 watched the fellow awhile as he would point the gun around in one place 

 and then another and finally asked him why he didn't shoot. "Shoot? 

 shoot? Why, who is shooting around here?" He came to find put the 

 man had a little runt of a pig tied on a long stick and was holding him 

 up to eat the acorns ofif the tree. But we don't do that way any more. 

 We could feed them on apples and- corn now. So we want to befriend 

 the fruit grower. 



We are a progressive people. One thing the reason we don't raise 

 better fruit is because we don't have to. We don't have to depend on 

 one thing here. We live just as we please. W^e don't have to depend 

 on just one thing. But to those who intend to make a business of fruit, 

 I would say, we need to make a study of it. One reason that we have 

 failures, often the trees are planted on ground not suitable. There is a 

 vast deal -to be learned in order to make a success of fruit growing. Let 

 us not be discouraged. Let us be up and doing, atttaining better results 

 each year. 



ARE PLUMS WORTH GRO\MXG? 

 (By Samuel Miller, Bluft'ton, Mo.) 



When a boy 70 years ago I could eat Yellow Gages, Blue plums 

 and Apricots from trees that grew in the house-yard, but I always found 

 the purple JSIagnum Bonum wormy ; it never ripening. This tree stood 

 in the garden. I might have drawn the contrast in the situations of 

 these trees, but then we did not know the curculio as we do now. 



How well do I remember the large prune tree that stood about ten 

 feet from the porch! At night, when there came a thunder gust, how 

 these prunes would drop ! By the flash of lightning one would be located 

 on the ground, and I would run out and usually capture it, knowing 

 ^\ ell that if I waited until morning, some one else would get most of 

 them. What mighty events have occurred since then — wars and rumors 

 01 war and earthcLuakes in divers places. Our nation, which was then 

 only fairly started, now stands first in importance of any on the earth— 

 the mighty Republic of the Western Hemisphere, 



