304 TEANSACTIONS OF THE CENTRAL 



EXECUTIVE COIMjMITTEE. 



Tlie Executive Committee of" the Central Illinois Horticultural Society met the Executive Com- 

 mittee of the State Horticultural Society, at the Illinois Industrial University, March 8th, 1870, and 

 made a,u agreement -with them for publishing the ijroceedings of the last annual meeting, in the 

 volume of State Transactions, for $65, in pursuance to a resolution authorizing the Executive Com- 

 mittee to make arrangements for publishing proceedings, whicli was passed at JIattoon February 

 2nd, 1870. II. J. DUNLAP, Secretary. " 



PROCEEDINGS. 



The second annual meeting- was called to order by the President, E. Daggy, in 

 Doles' Hall, in the city of Mattoon, at 10 o'clock A. M., February 1st, 1870. 

 Prayer by Rev. Mr. Lapsley, of Mattoon. 

 Mr. T. E. Woods, of Mattoon, delivered the following address of welcome: 



Ladies and Gentlemen of the Central Illinois Horticultural Society: 



It is a pleasure to perform the honorable duty assigned me of bidding you vv-elcome to om' young 

 citj' of the Grand Prairie, because I feel that it is good for j'ou to be here. About two years ago, at 

 Onarga, your President, Mr. Daggy, "Hural" Dunlap, and others, organized the Grand Prairie 

 Horticultural Society, and their ever busj^ and skillful hands planted the seed of this Association. 

 At our sister city' to the northwest, Decatur, last year, the second meeting was held, and the Society 

 re-christcncd the Central Illinois Horticultural Society; and here the germ sprang forth and began 

 to develop. Let us hope that, invigorated by the generous action of its growing membersliip at 

 this meeting in Mattoou, it may grow stronger, to bloom and produce its goodly fruits through 

 many succeeding beautiful Illinois summers and autumns. This Society embraces in its great scoi)e 

 the body of Illinois which stretches its broad and generous zone fro)u tlie Logansport and Peoria 

 Railway, on the north, to the borders of lower Egypt, on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad; an 

 empire teeming with a substantial richness unexcelled in the world; and its bloom-fringed southern 

 border extends almost to that ancient site of horticulture in Illinois where, about the mouth of the 

 Kaskaskia that flows on the western edge of our prairie, the early French adventurers who came by 

 way of the lake chain, from Canada, as early as 1082, planted their orchards around the old town of 

 Kaskaskia, before tlie "Charter Oak " of the Atlantic colony of Connecticut bore its historic fruit. 



Ladies and gentlemen of the Central Illinois Horticultural Society, we greet you as of the most 

 ancient, important and pleasing calling of the earth. The history of the human race begins in a 

 garden— and God was the first garden-maker: "and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in 

 Edeu;" and since the father of the race was put in the garden to dress it, and since he and his 

 descendants have been turned loose in the world to subdue it, and Christ prayed in Gethsenuine that 

 the " bitter cup '' might pass from liis sui^jjliant lips, gardens have had an important i)lace in human 

 story. It will be remembered how, when the plains of Shinar had been profligately shorn of their 

 covering of woodland, and tlie great Babylon was in the zenith of its glory, that Nebuchadnezzar's 

 wife had tlie great hanging gardens reared on jiillar, and column, aud arch, terrace on terrace above 

 each other, until the lofty forest trees they bore, alike with the rarest plants and flowers, reared 

 their nodding heads of verdure above the huge walls, three hundred and fifty feet high, and visible 

 from tlie half hundred fifteen mile streets, to remind her of her native vi'oody mountains of Media. 

 The ancient Jlexican civilization tliat succeeded the Aztecs on the banks of the lakes, in the great 

 basin on that grandest table laud of the world, whe];e was built the city of the Montezumas, 

 between seven and eight thousand feet above the gul/ strand, launched floating gardens on the 

 bright bosoms of the numerous slieets of water; and poets have sung of gardens, and nature in her 

 pi'imeval ages spread them on our own fair plains where now you are rearing thousands of orchards 

 and vineyards, "beautiful as apples of gold, in pictures of silver." In the discussions we are to 

 have the benefit of, embracing, perhaps, besides pomology and floriculture, also geology, miner- 

 alogy, entomology, ornithology, etc., we shall hope to be iustructed in a better jiractice than that 

 of the ancients of Palestine, and of Castile, and other places in Europe, who rendered barren their 

 <nice fertile lands by a destruction of their woodlands; aud we shall also hope to get out of the rut 

 of our pilgrim torefathers who systematically felled and destroyed the forests of Eastern America 

 in the days of the early settlement as a protection against the lurking savages with whom they waged 

 Avartare. We need to plant groves and forests on our prairies instead of destroying the wood- 

 lands that fringe them; aud how to do this, and how to plant and rear orchards and vineyards in 

 this rich soil and in this ^ ariable climate, is to be the fundameutal teaching we are to get from this 



