Winter Meeting. 233 



far as one was ever made. As to the numbering of our reports I wish 

 to say one thing. Up to 1878 the number of the repert equaled the age 

 of the Society. Had that plan been followed our next report would be 

 the 45th. Whereas it is to be the 47th. This was occasioned by calling 

 the restored report for 1878 the 20th ; whereas it was the 19th, and then 

 we had two meetings in 1880, and as no subsequent break to offset one 

 of them as in former years. Hence the age of the Society equals the 

 number of the report less two, and has done so since 1880. 



We come now to January, 1880. The committee on appropriations 

 reported $625.00 in the hands of the Treasurer, and a debt of $378.29, 

 mostly on account of Fruit Exhibits at Rochester, New York. Mr. Col- 

 man is in the chair. His address at the opening of this meeting was simply 

 grand. I wish I could read it to you, or have each one read it for him- 

 self. He evidently realized that the Society was now of age and thought 

 his own active years in its behalf rapidly drawing to a close. We now 

 know that he was wrong in so thinking, but such was his thought. Prof. 

 Swallow, Prof. Hussman and himself were the only ones present who 

 helped to organize the Society in 1859. How fitting it was that he who 

 presided over the first meeting should preside over the last meeting of 

 this period of 21 years. The father stayed with the boy until he was 21 ; 

 in afifection the boy is with the father yet. 



Thus closes our first period of 21 years with financial perplexities not 

 a few — other perplexities many. Fungus diseases and insect depreda- 

 tions had begun to multiply. Early in the period the suave tree peddler 

 was abroad in the land. Nurserymen had learned how to never be "just 

 out" of any particular kind of tree called for. Orchardists ordered good 

 trees and got inferior stock, paying exorbitant prices therefor. Indeed 

 in the meeting for organiztion these latter difficulties were discussed at 

 considerable length and with still more earnestness. Mr. Minor moved 

 "that this Association recommend to cultivators of fruit to patronize Mis- 

 souri nurserys in preference to those of the eastern states." From his 

 remarks we learn that these peddlers had taken nearly $4,000.00 out of 

 Cole county alone the fall before ; and he estimated that from the entire 

 State — and that meant really only a small part of it — hundreds of thou- 

 sands of dollars went annually to the East for fruit trees of various kinds. 



Mr. Mudd in 1866, in speaking of the tree peddler, said: "Have 

 they not done more to injure the fruit growers of the west than have 

 blight and frost? A planter had better take a rattlesnake to his house 

 than an oily tongued tree peddler to his confidence." Mr. Mudd surely 

 had had some trouble of his own, and we have them today. By tree 

 peddler is not meant the properly authorized agent of a reputable nursery, 



