46 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Here was a man getting twice the market price, and that when ("hi- 

 cago was flooded with peaches. He was evidently making a speci- 

 alty of this fruit. 



Nature did not give his trees any more sun or rain than those 

 of other orchards. But he had acquired the skill to use, to the best 

 advantage, what he did have. He had learned to thin the fruit to 

 obtain size, to cultivate and enrich the ground, and to destroy the 

 ourculios that would mar the beauty of the fruit. 



Merchants, mechanics, nurserymen, men in all branches of trade 

 have their specialties. Something they make better, or sell lower, 

 than their competitors. So with men of science. They recognize 

 the fact that life is too short to achieve distinction in more than one 

 branch of learning. So they select one. and spend a lifetime in its 

 pursuit. 



Carl Linnaeus was a renowned scholar, but the world remembers 

 him as a botanist. Newton, Franklin and David Hume, ripe schol- 

 ars all, but known to us principally through their special lines of 

 work and thought. 



If a man preaches on Sunday, practices law Monday, treats the 

 sick the next day, teaches school and edits a newspaper the rest of 

 the week, men would not say of him he was a man of genius and 

 greatly diversified talent, but rather that he was a shyster and a 

 quack. Our Edisons come to us through the line of one invention, 

 and only one. 



One may practice law, or medicine, or preach, but not all three. 

 A man confines himself to one profession, and frequently to one 

 branch of one. He may be a criminal lawyer, or a real estate law- 

 yer, an oculist or a dentist, may treat the lungs or the liver, and 

 nothing else. Pasteur is known to us, not as the skillful physician, 

 but as the specialist in the treatment of the terrible hydrophobia, 

 and the world is deriving comfort from his experiments, and is look- 

 ing forward with great hope for the future. The professoi's of the 

 Illinois University who enrich the proceedings of this Society, with 

 the results of their researches, are known to us as scholars and cul- 

 tured gentlemen, but the peoi)le of Illinois and neighboring states 

 know them each through their specialties. Stock breeders do not 

 all raise horses or the same breed of horses. I do not advocate the 

 growing of one kind of fruit, and only one: that would be putting 

 all one's eggs in the same basket, a practice that is never safe. Grow 

 as many kinds of fruit as you can well and profitably, and of these, 

 select one for a speciality. 



There are growers at Cobden who have become so skillful in 

 growing tomatoes, as never to fail to ship that fruit by the wagon 

 load when worth $1 a box. The peaches of others are said to be as 

 firm as any sold on South Water street. Others, by careful growing 

 and storing sweet potatoes, have made a brand that sells in the mar- 

 ket equal to the celebrated Jersey stock. These gentlemen are all 



