38 Americdn llorticullural Society. 



escape their atUicks. The discouraged fruit-grower who has lost his pear 

 trees by the omnipresent blight; his peach trees by the insidious yellows; 

 his grape-vines by the mildew, whose white phroud extinguishes all luipe for 

 fruit ; his aj)ple croj) having become scabby, and his strawberry plants having 

 been burned by the rust as by a consuming fire, turns his face away from 

 the old homestead upon which all these horticultural curses have fallen, and 

 travels to some new fair land where smiling skies and sweet winds promise 

 him immunity from all these evils. For a few years these promises are 

 kept, and his virgin crops are fair as the golden apples of llesperides. But 

 his obscure enemies follow him with the certainty of an avenging fate, and 

 they will follow him the wide world over, even within the gates of Eden it- 

 self, if he does not wage an exterminating warfare upon them. 



You can not probably name a fruit that we grow which is not preyed 

 upon by four or five or more of these lilliputian foes. The number thataflfect 

 the interests of horticulture can not be stated, but it is certainly counted by 

 hundreds, a single one of which, like the scab on pears an<l apples, costs the 

 American fruit-growers millions of dollars annually. 1 think it sjife to say 

 that the quantity of fruits entirely destroyed, or so seriously defaced as to 

 lose their market value, in this country by these low forms of vegetable life 

 is far greater than all that escapes their attack. This difficulty grows greater 

 year by year in all fruit-growing neighborhoods. That this is a situation 

 which demands the serious attention of all horticultural people I need not 

 suggest. 



LACK OF KNOWLEDGE. 



Our definite scientific knowledge of the nature of this vast underworld 

 of microscopic life, which pervades and att^icks and overwhelms all the 

 higher and nobler forms of vegetable organism, is as yet incom})lete, and is 

 all very modern. It is the most obscure domain of physical research. The 

 botanists who have thoroughly studied the fungology of this country, and 

 have done something to master its elusive problems, can be almost num- 

 bered on the fingers of the two hands. We have thousands of scientific men. 

 and hundreds of specialists, who are making plain paths through the in- 

 tricacies of scientific obscurity, but this great and universal realm of the 

 infinitely little things which attack all superior creations, and assail the in- 

 tegrity of every structure which enters into our civilization, has received 

 little investigation. 



What we need is more workers in this field. We must have more 

 knowledge, and that we may have investigation we must provide in some 

 definite way for the support of it. Is there any more imjiortant kind of work 

 for our agricultural colleges, and for our state experimental stations ? I urge 

 this matter upon your thoughtful consideration. 



A NOBLE OCCUPATION. 



The business of fruit-growing is one of the noblest occupations of the 



