SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 383 



paper you listened to this afternoon, has another mission in hor- 

 ticulture — landscape gardening; Brother Whitney to commercial 

 orcharding; Edgar Sanders to floriculture; Mr. Dunning to the 

 products of the garden ; Brother Minkler to fruits for the palate 

 of man; Brother Cotta, Graves and a host of others to the pro- 

 duction of trees and plants for the masses of people. So, Mr. 

 President, ladies and gentlemen, you cannot fail to see that the 

 good work to success has been pretty well covered. Yet I believe 

 we are only on the threshold of possibilities in the art that but few 

 have ever dreamed of. 



One of the missions of horticulture, or rather a mechanical art 

 connected with horticulture, has been through the canning of fruits 

 and vegetables, and enables us to have the fruits of every climate 

 on the earth daily on our tables, if we wish for and can pay for 

 them. Another mission is the preservation of fruits in their 

 natural state for months beyond their season. Still anotheris the 

 means of rapid transit by railway. 



We have anticipated the ripening of fruits for months in the 

 north, so that we now have strawberries at the time of this meet- 

 ing, in Chicago. So with all other fruits; and the compensation 

 to the south is that later we send them of our own productions to 

 lengthen their season. For instance, the south sends cabbages by 

 the car load, as early as April and May, and we in return send 

 them cabbage by the car load in September and October. So 

 California, that wonderful land of fruits, sends us her nectarines, 

 apricots, peaches, plums, cherries, pears, grapes, oranges, 

 etc., months in advance of their ripening here. 



Does it hurt us? No, high and low get a taste, at high prices, 

 and only become more eager for fruits natural to our climate 

 when ripened. The sun is now advancing upon us from the 

 southern hemisphere, cutting a swath daily twelve miles wide, 

 until at length in September his mission will have been finished in 

 the far northern wilderness, ripening the fruits natural to each 

 climate. This is the sun's mission in horticulture, and well does 

 he accomplish his work of fructification and ripening, a work with- 

 out which all the several missions of humanity, of all animated 

 nature and of every plant, flower, tree or seed, would be in vain. 



The Secretary read the following letter he had received from 



Mr. Ragan : 



Greencastle, Indiana, Jan. 6, 1890. 



E . W. Graves, Secretary Northern Illinois Horticulture Society, 

 Sandivich, Illinois. 



Dear Sir — It is useless for me to predict a good meeting of 

 your Society this week. That is a foregone conclusion. With the 

 material your section affords it could not be otherwise. I do not 

 state it in the spirit of flattery but in good hard earnest, when I 



