SECOND DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 443 



ANNUAL ADDRESS, 



DELIVERED THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER l> ;. l.ssn, in THE TEM- 

 PORARY PAVILION. 



Bv Hon. P. D. Wigginton. 



Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: It is with much diffidence 

 and not a little pride that I approach the task allotted to me here to-day. 



With diffidence, because I seriously doubt my ability to deal with the 

 subject in the manner which its importance deserves. With pride, because 

 almost my first and nearly all of my manhood days have been spent 

 amidst the people of this great San Joaquin Valley. 



I well remember the day 1 first came to this beautiful city, now twenty- 

 four years ago. You know and have noted the changes time since then 

 has made quite as well or better than I have. I noted then, and all have 

 since realized, that Stockton is destined to be the second greatest city of 

 this the Golden State. Golden, so called, because of its enormous yield of 

 the precious metals, and now more than quadruple so because of its agri- 

 cultural (I use the word in its broadest sense) productions. Golden Cali- 

 fornia! Always first in gold, and now in all things agricultural the equal, 

 and in very many the superior, of all her sister States and other countries. 



Agriculture is the greatest of all arts. To successfully practice it requires 

 education equal to that demanded in any other of the arts or sciences. 

 The time for believing that anybody and everybody can be a farmer has 

 gone by. Thorough education is conceded to be necessary to pursue it suc- 

 cessfully. The great and intricate mysteries of nature are revealed more 

 to the intelligent and successful tiller of the soil than to those of any other 

 pursuit in civilization. In it mankind attains greater perfection in every- 

 thing that makes them good and great, than in any other of the avocations 

 of life. It is the noblest and most ennobling of pursuits; and to it this 

 republic owes more of its greatness and power than to all others. And to 

 it the future of this great nation must look for its purity and perpetuity. 



Agriculture — its rise, progress, set-backs, successes, and failures — is a 

 very interesting study, and one vastly too broad to be comprehensively 

 studied and understood by one like myself; necessarily, as I am engaged 

 in and absorbed by another avocation. My mistress, the Law, is a jealous 

 one, and gives little time for the pursuit of other studies and avocations. 

 I feel my inability to more than hint at the many and important matters 

 which would furnish food for thoughts of a lifetime, and material for a 

 thousand lectures or addresses, each longer than the time I can properly 

 occupy in the delivery of this one, and I shall therefore seize upon such 

 thoughts akin to the great subject under consideration as may suggest 

 themselves, trying to touch upon those which I deem amongst the most 

 important. 



The rise and fall of nations is marked by their advance or decline in 

 the art of agriculture. 



The enlightenment and intelligence of a people are marked by their 



