106 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



have and always have had that this place, the College, is a particularly 

 good place for the State Horticultural Society to meet at least once 

 annually. You are most welcomed and you have everything at your 

 hands that we can furnish. Thank you. 



(Applause) 



Chairman, (Mr. G. A. Hawley) Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

 it is certainly pleasant to us to ])e welcomed to this Institution where so 

 much of the Horticultural science has been developed. We should feel 

 at home here after this welcome. It alwaj's counts. As has been said 

 this is the first meeting that this Society has had at this College and it 

 has been organized for fifty years. It may seem strange to us that this 

 is a fact but Mr. President, I believe that there were attractions in other 

 places that were of more importance than if we had met here with you. 

 Your work is a scientific work. It has to do with the questions that we 

 ask. Our work is in spraying and the use of practical men in the field 

 and wdien all is said and done it is true, that the facts which are developed 

 by you are worthless unless they are for the practical use. 



This College has grown in the last thirty years. We hardly recognize 

 it as it was at that time. Without casting any reflection on what it has 

 been, I presume it would be quite in order if we should say something 

 that really reflected on what it was thirty years ago. I want to tell you 

 something, my impression possibly, of this school thirty years ago. I 

 came from a fruit growers section. We grow some fruit there. We 

 hardly expected to find the best practices here. We used to pick our 

 fruit on the nice days when we could see its color. We had the up-to-date 

 packing method and we supposed we were fairly advanced in the handling 

 of fruit. I want to tell you that during mj' daj^s at this College I never 

 knew of them to harvest fruit except apples. The picking baskets were 

 the crudest kind built in which the fruit was placed. That is my recol- 

 lection. The kind of fruit harvesting that was done at this College at 

 that time was not much good. Ilowevei-, that may be, today we know 

 that here is where we have come with all of our questions to be solved 

 and they are solved and properly discussed. But we nuist think from 

 time to time, and in fact we are forced to consider what importance is 

 there to this horticultural Society. It has been inferred plenty of times 

 that we were filling no place in particular. If we are not, we are useless 

 and the quicker we are scrapped the better. We have no place for 

 things that are useless but here is what I conceive the Horticultural 

 Society is now. Knowledge is developed in an Institution like this 

 but this knowledge must be passed along to the growers, the men in the 

 field, the man that is raising the family and estabhshing the best citizen- 

 ship of the State. 



The time was and it still exists in a great degree, when a teacher could 

 not approach a practical farmer. He can't today. If we wish to know- 

 how to do a certain thing on the farm the first thing we do is to go to 

 a successful farmer. We go to a successful fruit grower and learn the 

 thumb rules of successful fruit growing. 



Your Horticultural Society meets three times a year which is plenty. 

 Every meeting is profitable. You come together three hundred strong. 

 You come from every portion of the State. You come here to improve 

 yourselves in the methods of raising fruit tor tlie particular reason of 

 making money and building homes and doing this job in the best possible 



