S2 . STATE POMOLOtilCAL SOCIETY. 



ITS ORGANIZATION. 



Tims it was sou3:ht to ])rovc, fir.^t, the fact that \vc hud tlie capacity for a 

 broad .systciu of horticulture, and tiion that we could sustain it; and to enforce 

 this, and to teach the principles of this, one of the highest as it is one of the 

 most- difficult of the useful arts, we combined and organized this society, so 

 that its main object has been educational, to teach and to be taught. To accom- 

 plish this the society has brouglit in as tributaries and aids all congenial arts 

 and sciences; trained men have been called to instruct us; ))ractical men have 

 thronged to our meetings and have given us their experience ; a generous zeal 

 has been aroused in all classes of men a)id women to establish the society and 

 promote its objects; so that the prospect for success was never brighter than it 

 is to-day. 



THE FUTURE. 



!No man can travel through this State and not get an inkling of its destiny in 

 liorticulture. Forty miles east of the Michigan lake shore is a city and county 

 that is a growing type of what is to be. There are entire counties that fifty 

 years from now will be scenes of rural loveliness and magnificence. I have oftea 

 compared the advantages of this lake shore with those of my native State, with 

 the shore of Long Island, with the banks of the Connecticut and of the Hudson. 

 Give this one-half the years of settlement with those, and I predict that this 

 shore, from New Buffalo north, especially through the peach and tender fruit 

 growing counties, will be lined with cottages and villas, the homes of a happy 

 and cultured people, and that the country will be divided into plantat.ons of 

 small farms and orchards that will illustrate American husbandry and Ameri- 

 can life in its very best forms and habits. 



Lord Bacon did very nearly say a true thing when he declared that ''nations 

 in their march in civilization began with erecting statelv edifices and ended with 

 highly cultivated gardens.'' I hope for the sake of our American cities that the 

 day of stately edifices is gone, and that the day of cultivated gardens has come. 

 Standing here at this mournftil and disastrous outcome of shoddy and extrava- 

 gance ,of wild speculation and the maddening rush for wealth which has brought 

 desolation to the land, I ask an intelligent people if there is not need of the benign, 

 healthful, and conservative iniluence of our cause to be spread abroad through- 

 out the land? When we hear this melancholy wail go up from the homes of 

 the countrv, that the sons and daughters have deserted the homesteads of their 

 fathers and mothers for the glare and glitter of the cities, is it not time to build 

 lip the moral and social force contained in this horticultural advantage? 



Hence the educational clement of this society is the most valuable and to be 

 the most cherished. 



It was desirable to establish tliis characteristic of our state as one that is fixed 

 and permanent, for with it and upon it were to be built such qualities in the 

 people as would refine and ennoble them. 



THE ADVANTAGE TO ]JE DEVELOPED. 



It seemed desirable to develop our advantage. If we could add the fine art 

 of hoi'ticulture to our system of agriculture, the combiriation would be com- 

 plete as well as beneficent. It would be adding music, painting, and scul[)ture 

 to the toil and drudgery of daily life. There was a special reason for the de- 



