STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 11 



liberty from their classes, and when they have left, to go to some other 

 class. I hope it will not be considered a lack o f courtesy or interest on 

 their part. 



The President spoke as follows: 



Seventeen years ago this month, a few — not a dozen persons — met 

 by appointment at Decatur, to organize the Illinois State Horticultural 

 Society. The wisdom that dictated that movement has long since been 

 apparent. Then there were but a few small commercial orchards, and 

 market gardening was in its infancy. We were entering on our first 

 experiments, and settlement had just begun to show its effect on our cli- 

 mate ; while our insect foes, that we now have to battle, had not begun a 

 serious warfare on orchard and garden. 



Those seventeen years have been fruitful of progress, and to-day the 

 orchards, the vineyards, and the market gardens of the State occupy 

 many thousand acres ; and many square miles of river bluff, of rolling 

 prairie, and woodland hillside, are made resplendent with horticultural 

 riches. 



As the years have come and gone, some of that band of workers and 

 organizers — men who put their hands to the early work — have laid down 

 to their final rest. But new workers have come into the field, and the 

 good work will go on long after all of us shall have gone to our last home. 

 It is well that the good work shall continue, for Horticulture is the hand- 

 maid of Agriculture, and refines and adds to the enjoyments of life. 



In all periods man has had to labor. Even Adam, when placed in the 

 midst of Eden, was commanded to dress and to keep it. But, under the 

 new arrangement that soon followed, there were new duties imposed, and 

 new enemies to encounter, all of which we now most fully comprehend. 

 The summer's heat and the winter's cold must be modified by culture, 

 by shelter, and by the shears and the pruning knife. 



At first this Society gave its efforts to the orchard and the garden ; 

 but soon there came a demand for forests, and forestry and hedge-growing 

 were added to the list of our active duties. Then the railroads have 

 made a new demand on us for the ties that form the road-bed, the 

 timber for culverts, for cars, and for fence posts. 



How best to provide for all of these new and old demands is the 

 object of these annual gatherings, that call you from your homes in order 

 that you may plan the work for its better progress. Much has been 

 accomplished, but more has to be done. The varied changes of the 

 seasons, the unequal alternations of wet and dry, the uncertain attacks 



