456 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



And now in fulfillment of my promise to urge upon you while I 

 live, the importance of producing from seed, new improved varieties 

 of fruits, adapted to the various soils and climates of our vast terri- 

 tory, I have substantially to repeat what I have said in my former ad- 

 dresses. These are the means which God and nature have provided, 

 for the improvement of our traits, and the better we understand and 

 practice them the nearer shall we approach to that divine beneficence 

 which gives flavor and richness to our fruits, and to the senses the 

 highest types of beauty, grace and gratification. 



Thus from time to time 1 have spoken to you, and, were these my 

 last words, I would again impress them upon you as of the utmost im- 

 portance. With a careful study of the tendencies of varieties, and a 

 judicious selection of parents, as breeders, we shall ^o on to produce 

 fruits which will be adapted to every climate or condition of our land 

 where any species of fruit may be grown. When we see what nature has 

 done without the aid of manipulation, in the cold regions of the north, as 

 in ilussia, from whence came the Oldenburg and Tetofsky apples, the 

 Black Tartarian cherry, and other good fruits, as seen by Prof. Budd 

 and Mr. Chas. Gibb, who can doubt our ability to produce fine fruits 

 even in the colder regions of our country ? 



AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIEIY — TWENTIETH BIENNIAL MEETING. 



The evening session of the society on the first day was taken up 

 by a popular lecture on '' Injurious Fungi," delivered by Dr. C. E. 

 Beseey, of the Nebraska State University. His paper was illustrated 

 by a series of charts, and the members were deeply interested in what 

 he said, and yet he failed to add greatly to the list of preventives and 

 remedies. He spoke first of the bacteria family, which exists every- 

 where within a few thousand feet of the earth. The house-wife in her 

 process of canning simply excludes the air to keep out bacteria. The 

 family of mildews was next alluded to, a cross-section of mildewed 

 Concord grape leaf being shown; as the resting-spores of the grape 

 mildew are in the leaves which fall to the ground in the fall, it would 

 be a good plan to burn the leaves. Blight was the next family de- 

 scribed ; not the disease known by that name, but the fungi producing^ 

 it. These were fully illustrated, and their method of operation was 

 explained. The black fungi, he said, is perhaps the most injurious 

 family, next to bacteria. In the mildews reproduction is both by non- 

 sexual and sexual influences ■ viz. : by breaking off and separating 

 into individual spores in the first case, and by the falling of the rest- 

 ing-spores with the leaves, thus carrying the fungi over the winter in 

 the latter instance. Speaking of the black-knot in the plum and cherry 



