SUMMER MEETING AT CHILLICOTHE. 9 



and every description of the choicest building material, and great rivers to water 

 our gardens if need be, and bear our rich products on their deep swift currents 

 onward to the markets of the world— just the very place where we may work 

 with a laudable ambition to regain the lost Eden. 



We have now in our possession more than forty medals and awards of merit on 

 Missouri fruits, which we are proud to say have always borne oil" the highest prize 

 when in competition with fruit from other States. On the south slope of the 

 Ozarks we tind a country fast becoming famous for the production of line peaches, 

 where we find the Olden orchard of nine hundred acres, mostly peach, and the 

 largest in the United States. With all our great natural resources, and our 

 favored market location, with our two hundred and twenty-tive thousand farms, 

 our twenty-tive thousand fruit-growers, with over fifty million fruit trees already 

 planted in orchard, and an annual income of fifteen million dollars over home con- 

 sumption, with a strong State horticultural society to lead, backed by scores of 

 earnest and enthusiastic local Svicieties and fostered by our State, who will dare 

 to place a limit on what we may accomplish in the future? Few persons realize the 

 importance and the value of the products of our orchards, and the rapid growth 

 of horticulture in the United States. Twenty-tive years ago the estimated income 

 from the sale of fruit in the United States was twenty million dollars. And we 

 had plenty of croakers at that time, howling too much fruit. Now the estimated 

 income is one hundred and twenty million dollars, and we have newly settled 

 states, territories, towns, cities and communities, both at home and in foreign 

 countries, calling for more and better fruit. Shall they have it ? This is a question 

 for the people of Missouri to answer, in a great measure. 



It always has been and will still be the aim and ambition of our State Horti- 

 cultural Society to supply the growing demand for fruit with a succession of the 

 best, put up in new clean packages of full standard size ; to reduce the cost of pro- 

 duction by improved methods of care and culture, and transportation by increased 

 quantities, so our railroads can afford to run special fast fruit trains; to educate 

 and induce our people to give their orchards better care and culture, to pay more 

 attention to floriculture and the ornamentation of their homes, public parks, ceme- 

 teries, pleasure grounds, college and common school grounds, all of which will have 

 a tendency to develop our dormant wealth, educate, refiue ard make our people 

 iiappy. 



The great Columbian Exposition, to open in Chicago next year, will doubtless 

 be the largest and grandest that the world has ever beheld. As the representative 

 horticulturists of the best fruit State in the Union, it will be our pride and our 

 ambition to show the fruits and flora of Missouri in all their glory and perfection. 

 When the spies that Moses sent to view the land of Canaan returned after forty 

 days' search, they reported the land as flowing with milk and honey, and this is 

 the fruit of it, calling attention to the specimens of rtgs, pomegranates, and the 

 mammoth cluster of grapes that was borne on a staff" by two of them ; but we are 

 not able to take it, for it is inhabited by men cf great stature. Now we do not 

 wonder that such a country produced giants, or that the spies carried back speci- 

 men fruit to show their countrymen; they knew very well it would be useless to 

 tell of such wonderful fruit without making a show of it, for no one would believe 

 them. So with Missouri. 



It will be folly for Missourians to write and talk about their resources, their 

 fruit and other products in the future. The question will be, v, here were Missouri 

 and her boasted products at the World's Fair? In anticipation of this question and 

 for our answer, we want to go up to Chicago with the finest specimens of all that 



