No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 543 



PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



By GABRIEL HIESTBR, Harrisburg, Pa. 



Fifty years have passed with all their successes and failures since 

 this Society was established. 



For a half century a comparatively small company of men, drawn 

 together by their common love of fruit, llowers and trees, have meet 

 annually, to exchange views, to renew acquaintances, and add some- 

 what from their experience to the general fund of horticultural 

 knowledge. 



For nearly forty years I have met with them. In viewing the 

 present audience I look in vain for many faces that were familiar 

 in the early days, faces of men who were respected not only on ac- 

 count of their horticultural knowledge, but who were loved for all 

 those qualities of mind and heart that make good comrades. Some 

 are in distant states, some are prevented by ill health, and many 

 are resting from their labors, and reaping the reward of a well 

 spent life. But while I miss the faces of those strong, good, lov- 

 able men of the early days, I see occupying their seats to-day young 

 men, full of enthusiasm, courage and state pride, ready and able to 

 take up the work which they have laid down, and push it with equal 

 diligence and success. 



We meet to-day to celebrate our bi-centennial anniversary. It 

 seems to me that this is a good time to ask ourselves the question, 

 Is it worth while? Do these meetings pay? Are we getting out 

 of them as much as they cost? 



At one of the first meetings which I ever attended, President 

 Josiah Hoopes made use of these words in his annual address : 



"We are designed to be social beings, and he who would conceal 

 an important discovery and refuse to assist his less fortunate friend 

 with the benefit of his experience, is an enemy to the cause and 

 should be shunned as such. Let our lasting endeavor be to render 

 some real lasting service to horticulture, and by the simple act of 

 each individual member relating the many little items of experience 

 that lie may have gained in his daily work, receive in return the ac- 

 cumulated wisdom of those Avho have made the subject their life 

 long study." 



If during the first fifty years of its existence, this Society had 

 done nothing more than encourage and keep alive this spirit of 

 mutual helpfulness, this willingness to do something for the com- 

 mon good without special pay, it would have been worth while, it 

 would have paid well. But it has done much more. The early 

 members were not commercial orchardists as we accept that term 

 to-day. Most of them kept a small orchard as a side line to general 

 farming, and sold the product in the local market. Cold storage was 

 unknown. Railroads had not penetrated to every nook and comer 

 of the country, carrying tropical fruits North, Northern grown fruits 

 South, Western fruits East, and Eastern fruits West, as they do 

 to-day. Their object was to build up the home orchard in such a 

 way as to furnish the owner and his local town with a good apple 

 for every day in the year, and to prolong the season of the other 

 fruits. So we find that these men living in many different counties 

 planted a great many varieties in each orchard ; they met together an- 



