260 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



advantages. May it ever be the rallying point around which we may gather 

 to mutually discuss our difficulties and needs, and to remind us that success 

 comes by care, forethought and patient industry. 



As stated on a former occasion, we need these gatherings for mutual encour- 

 agement, especially in times like these when so many put on wry faces, and 

 repeat with a variety of changes that it is 'Miard times;" and in their soli- 

 tude think their lot peculiary unfortunate. It is well to have this inter- 

 change of knowledge and experience to remind us tliat each has his ups and 

 downs. We require this social communion of thought that we may learn new 

 ways and means, and catch some of tlie inspiration of the more hopeful, thus 

 assisting us to appreciate the grand fact that there is more sunsliine than 

 cloudy weather, more day than night, more prosperity than adversity. We 

 want to brood less over the book of Lamentations, and study more diligently 

 those encouraging lessons so abundantly found in the good Book of Life, recall- 

 ing the teaching of the vineyard, and remembering the reward of the thrifty 

 husbandman who improved his spring time in sowing the good seed, his sum- 

 mer in weeding out the tares and cultivating his crops, that the fall might 

 bring forth a plentiful harvest of the fruits of his toil for winter's enjoyment. 



Rarely have our trees gone into winter quarters in better condition than the 

 season just ended, and it seems to me that in closing our books we have a lib- 

 eral balance on the credit side to encourage us to go forward with a determin- 

 ation to increase it the coming year. 



Certainly the two weeks of the new year give us promise in this direction. 

 Old Winter has spread a liberal mantle over the earth to keep it warm and 

 give it fertility, besides furnishing protection to our trees. I am reminded 

 here to call attention to the fact that a few weeds, oats, rye or cornstalks in 

 our orchards are all-sufficient to induce the snow to lie quiet where it falls, in- 

 stead of rushing at tlie wind's behest, into heaps, greatly to the annoyance of 

 travelers and the detriment of our orchards. 



In conclusion, when we shall gather around our festive board, spread with 

 fruits, etc., and recall the extreme cold weather east, west, north and south, 

 during the past few weeks, I trust we shall renew our thanks to Lake Michi- 

 gan whose genial influences have kept the spirits of our thermometers so far 

 above those depressing points which have probably endangered the fruit crop 

 of our neighbors. 



PLANT LIFE. 

 READ IN JANUARY, 1S79, BY MRS. L. MILLINGTON. 



It is well that the third period of time assigned to the creation should be 

 given to the production of vegetable life. ^^Let the earth bring forth grass, 

 the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after liis kind, whose 

 seed is in itself." That Avas the command, because until the earth was 

 clothed in vegetation as a garment, not the smallest creature breathing the 

 air in any way, could exist for one moment. The atmosphere was not only a 

 deadly poison, but there was no possibility of an animal, or an insect subsist- 

 ing without the food furnished by plants. The whole food of all the living 

 beings on the earth to-day conies from plants, and we live in the air purified 

 by their chemical elaborations. In view of this important mission, nature 

 has made the most careful and exact provision for the continuance of all the 

 species from the highest to the lowest. It is not for grandeur or beauty that 



