260 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



relate that case in a concise history of Brown County Horticultural 

 Society. 



This society was instituted in the month of January, 1874. It 

 was, perhaps, the offspring of a growing conviction that the city of 

 Green Bay and its vicinity had reached a period of its existence when 

 recourse must be had to other sources of wealth and prosperity than 

 the aboriginal forests of pine and other timbers which had, for two 

 centuries, furnished the almost exclusive material for business and 

 traffic; when, indeed, it must go down beneath the very roots of 

 those uncultivated trees and dig out of the underlying soil its future 

 wealth and subsistence. The importance of the undertaking was 

 realized; men competent as any in the city for conducting an en- 

 terprise of importance joined hands, and the society was instituted. 



For the first two years it held its meetings in the editorial rooms 

 of one of the oldest journals of the northwest, where every facility 

 for obtaining information was at hand, and all the surroundings 

 conspired to favor the work and objects of the association. Its 

 original membership comprised men of experience, men of observa- 

 tion, men of high culture, of executive talent and enthusiasm, prac- 

 tical men; in a word, the men who inaugurated the Brown County 

 Horticultural Society were even qualified and competent to take in 

 hand, conduct, and carry on to success, such an institution as they 

 had inaugurated. And they demonstrated their ability by masterly 

 essays and disquisitions, instructive and entertaining discussions, 

 and vigorous and unremitted prosecutions of the objects of the 

 association in all directions. 



For a time interest was steadily maintained, and though few 

 accessions were made to the membership, yet the original members 

 came up to their work in full harness, and generally much enjoyed 

 the sessions of the society. But at length the enjoyment began to 

 decline, interest to wane, and attendance to become unsteady; in 

 fact, the society languished and work grew heavy. And so it came 

 to pass that the meetings were not always held. From semi- 

 monthly they fell off to one per month, and then that one was 

 occasionally neglected or forgotten, and finally they were intermit- 

 ted altogether for more than a year, and the society came near giv- 

 ing up the ghost entirely. 



Now why came such condition to be? What element of pros* 

 perity was lacking? What condition of success had been over- 



