Annual Meeting — Report of Secretary. ST 



REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



The year through which we have passed since our last annual 

 meeting has brought with it the usual diversity of experience and 

 results. To some of those engaged in horticulture, it has yielded 

 a rich harvest of the fruits of the field, the orchard and the garden; 

 to others, the returns have been moderate in quantity, and but 

 second rate in quality, and with very many, some of them those 

 who have usually been our most successful cultivators, the fruits 

 harvested have been those of experience alone; not very palatable 

 or satisfactory to the recipient, but which, if rightly garnered and 

 properly utilized, will yet yield some benefit. It is the mission of 

 this, our yearly winter gathering, to carefully survey the season's 

 labor and its results, gathering hope and courage from its successes, 

 gaining knowledge and experience from its failures. 



The reputation of our climate for extreme variability has been 

 fully maintained the past season. The fall of 1877 was excessively 

 wet, and when winter set in, the ground was saturated with moist- 

 ure. The entire winter was excessively mild; on one day only did 

 the mercury fall to zero, and in one only of the winter months 

 was the average mean temperature below the freezing point; a 

 winter with frost and snow almost left out. Many of the days in 

 each of the winter months were so warm and pleasant, as to excite 

 fears that the fruit crop would be destroyed by the premature de- 

 velopment of the buds. The spring opened early, warm and pleas- 

 ant, and in due time the fruit trees, small fruits and vines were 

 covered with bloom, and never was there greater promise of a 

 bountiful yield of all kinds of fruit; but there came a young 

 winter in the month of May, which seriously blighted these bright 

 prospects. This was followed by chilling wind and rain storms, 

 which seriously retarded the development of both foliage and fruit; 

 the effects of which were felt in diminished vitality throughout the 

 entire season. The summer was marked for its periods of extreme 

 heat and its excessive rains; the average rainfall for the months of 

 May, June, July and August was over five inches each, through- 



