Minutes. 87 



ditions then. Then the wayfarer might have traveled over 

 this state and have seen only exceedingly few of the annual 

 flowering plants and shrubs. Now you may travel the state 

 over, and in the season of plant bloom wherever you are 

 within the limits appropriated to human habitation, you will 

 see the influences of horticulture. 



I do not know, Mr. President, who was the author of the 

 aphorism that God might have made a more beautiful 

 flower than the rose and a more pleasant fruit than the 

 strawberry, but the truth was that He never had done it. 

 To that I think we may add that doubtless God might have 

 implanted in the human breast a higher and more ennobling 

 sentiment than a love of plants, fruits and flowers, but the 

 fact remains that He has not done it. In considering the 

 question of the development already attained in horticultural 

 science, I have frequently asked myself the question, when 

 in point of time and where in point of development shall 

 this thing cease, if cease it does while earth continues to 

 yield her fruits in response to human efforts and skill. I to- 

 day stand here in 1887, surrounded by the improvements 

 that have been brought about in horticultural science from 

 the time of our fathers. You, by your labors, have removed 

 obstacles and pitfalls from the pathway of horticultural im- 

 provement, and your successors in the meantime will re- 

 move still more, and the generation that stands where we 

 now stand in 1987, on the threshold of a new era, will see a 

 vista opening and extending onward and upward before 

 them, filled with obstructions to be removed by them and 

 their successors. 



Mr. President, I am admonished that whatever time I 

 may occupy here will be abstracting just so much time from 

 what is set apart for your other and more important exer- 

 cises of this meeting; therefore it but remains for me, in the 

 name of the Waukesha Horticultural Society and the citi- 

 zens of this village, to extend to you a cordial greeting, and 

 to express to you that at no remote future period, when the 

 genial sunshine will better enable us to exhibit to you the 

 evidences of our improvement in horticultural science in 

 our village and its surroundings, and to hope for the pleas- 



