Societies and Organization. 211 



"Now, I want to start this matter by placing you on the programme of the 

 next meeting to present the subject. The start made last year at Cleveland will 

 enable you to get the subject before the meeting. Prepare yourself accordingly." 



But, at the very outset, I am met with the following seathing, unjust, unkind 

 and incorrect criticism, which appeared as an editorial in the Country Gentleman 

 of June 2, 1887 : 



" 'American Horticultural Society.' — From Mr. W. H. Ragan, Green- 

 castle, Ind., Secretary of the society which has adopted the above name (formerly 

 the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society), we have a copy of the transactions 

 for the year 1886, including the proceedings of the Cleveland meeting last year. 

 While we always hail with pleasure all successful efforts to promote the 

 improvement of horticulture, and to add to the substantial pleasures resulting 

 from increased skill in propagation, planting, pruning and culture, and to 

 extend the right hand to all engaged in giving these cheap comforts and luxuries 

 to the people at large, we can not help taking some exception to an unwise course 

 with so excellent an end in view. On looking over the volume before us, we 

 find ten pages occupied with a list of the seventy-two horticultural and kindred 

 societies in the Union, of which several are national in their character, with a 

 large number of state societies. Some of these have had nearly half a century of 

 active and influential existence, while this new society, with its scattered and 

 partly paid membership, jj/«ces itself at the head! A subordinate position is given 

 to the American Pomological Society, whose labors for thirty-seven years in 

 connection with its established state committees, and the continued revision of its 

 unequaled catalogue of fruits, have given it a place above any other association 

 of the kind in Europe or America. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 

 with its energetic and useful labors for half a century, the Pennsylvania society, 

 and several veteran state organizations, which have accomplished so much for the 

 cause in which we are all laboring, are to be at once assigned to a subordinate 

 place to this new society ! Secretary Ragan, in his published remarks, expresses 

 his desire to see ' an American Horticultural Society,' with its auxiliary branches 

 in pomology, forestry, floriculture, etc.; and, to favor this end, a letter from a well 

 known cultivator is published, in which he charges the late President Wilder 

 with ' being jealous ' of this new association, and remarks that as soon as the 

 president is gone he proposes to unite the two — one a veteran body, well organized 

 in every state, and the other a young claimant, the existence of which is yet 

 barely established. 



" The proposition is made to unite under this new one the American Pomolog- 

 ical Society, the American Forestry Congress, the Society of American Florists,, 

 the National Association of Nurserymen, all under its leadership. Should this 

 conglomeration be accomplished, those who have had experience with bringing a 

 multitude of subjects inlo one general meeting may readily comprehend the nat- 

 ure of the confusion which would follow the crowding together such an assem- 

 blage of reports and discussions. The proposed advantage of saving travel by 

 the union may still be accomplished, if desired, by an agreed union of time and 

 place between the difierent and separate organizations, in the same way that the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for the 



