INDIANA HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 403 



US satisfactory fruit crops. But when we go to the clay lands of the 

 hills and slopes we find full compensation for what was once thought to 

 be the niggardliness of nature. Here we have the conditions necessary 

 to grow the finest fruits the country produces. 



Southern Indiana produced the apples that carried off the honors at 

 the recent world's fair at Paris. It was Indiana fruit that captured the 

 best premiums at the Buffalo exposition last season. We were told re- 

 cently by the largest handler of fruit in the State that Illinois and Mis- 

 souri might boast of their fine red apples, but Indiana grows redder and 

 better ones. California might gi'ow larger fruit, but it was inferior in 

 quality and looks when compared with the best produced in the Hoosier 

 State. 



LACK OF FRUIT. 



While there is no doubt but what we can produce the very best fruit 

 to be found in the country, the trouble is we don't grow it in suflScient quan- 

 tity to even meet home demands, to say nothing of contributing what 

 we might to other marliets. From the very best authority we learn that 

 during the past ten years over $10,000,000 have gone to other States for 

 fruits of various kinds. What we need is a general awakening along the 

 line of the possibilities of fruit culture in the State in order that we may 

 have more concert of action among fruit growers. We need more co- 

 operation in fruit groAving, and among horticulturists in the fruit sections 

 of the State. When we stop this leak of over $1,000,000 annually that 

 goes abroad to bring in fruit for home consumption, that is not as good 

 as we can grow, and add to it one or two million dollars of fruit to be 

 exported, then, and not tell then, will Indiana take her just rank, which 

 is as the grandest horticultural State in the Union. 



But individual effort will be long in bringing about this desirable re- 

 sult. The development of horticulture in Indiana has been a long and con- 

 tinued struggle with little or no State aid. Most of our oldest and best 

 workers have given their long life, time, money and energy to the cause 

 and are now poor. We have their experience, and, to a great extent, it is 

 no longer experimental. What we now need is State aid sufficient to place 

 this experience with every one who owns land that is adapted to fruit 

 growing for commercial purposes. 



Many newer States devote yearly fair amounts. for the furtherance of 

 horticulture. Michigan, with nearly half her domain yet covered with the 

 original forest, appropriates $4,000 yearly to horticulture. Even some of 

 the blizzard-beswept States of the northwest, where only small fruits can 

 be successfully grown, make liberal appropriations annually to the cause. 

 Our last legislature appropriated the sum of $1,000 for the use of the State 

 Horticultural Society. It ought to be made four or five thousand by the 

 next General Assembly, which would enable us to develop this great in- 



