STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 35 



Though horticulture is not necessarily connected with farming, 

 yet farming is not complete without horticulture. It is the 

 aesthetics of farming — the poetry of farming. Thus the whole 

 community is within the reach of the efforts we are endeavoring 

 to put forth. Is not the field broad enough — is not the work suf- 

 ficiently inviting for our united efforts ? 



We want to extend the usefulness of our Society by drawing to 

 our ranks more working material. We need large accessions to 

 our list of members — not wholly for the fees, but also that we 

 may have a larger number from which to draw for such services 

 as may be from time to time needed, A few individuals, working 

 over the same ground year after year, without having their labors 

 seconded and encouraged by others, will become weary in well 

 doing. They need to come in contact with outside enthusiasm 

 that they may imbibe its spirit and thus be spurred on in their 

 labors. Where, too, labor of the same kind is required of them 

 many times repeated, they are apt to repeat themselves, and thus 

 their productions are simply a repetition. Say what we will 

 about education and progress, there is but little about any of us 

 which is purely original, and if we are requird to draw all that at 

 one time then we must fall out of the ranks or repeat ourselves. 

 So we need more members that we may have more workers. We 

 need the help of those who are gathered here at this time, not 

 only to sustain this meeting, but also to sustain the Society ia 

 future years. We have had your assistance in arranging for this 

 meeting, and we need it as well and hope to have it, in other 

 directions. 



We also invite membership that those who thus enroll them- 

 selves may be benefited at the hands of the Society. If we suc- 

 ceed in making the Society useful, as we hope to, and trust that 

 in the past in some measure we have done, then its members to 

 that degree are and will be benefited. And any one who thus 

 joins hands with us cannot fail of greater benefit than he will re- 

 ceive standing aloof merely an interested looker-on. So, while 

 you will benefit the Society by membership, it in time compensates 

 you for this confidence. 



Our methods of work need no essential changes, yet we may 

 and should expand them to some extent, as we have been from 

 time to time endeavoring to do. We are endeavoring to reach 

 the people through three well defined channels : By holding an- 

 nual exhibitions ; by holding meetings like this for the reading of 



