216 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



bushels and North Missouri one-half million bushels of peaches. In 

 peaches IMissouri stands second this year, California alone leading. 



These are only two of our fruits. Pears, cherries, plums, straw- 

 berries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes. Who shall number the 

 bushels, or crates, or boxes of all these fraits that have been put on 

 the market, to say nothing of the quantity used at home? Sarcoxie 

 stands far in the lead in strawberry production, nearly 300 car-loads of 

 berries being sent out last summer. The apple crop was worth 

 $12,000,000, the peach crop $3,500,000, pears, cherries, plums and 

 grapes $1,500,000, and the berries $2,500,000 more, making the value of 

 our fruit crop worth $20,000,000. 



If any gold mines or silver mines, or lead or zinc mines, or coal 

 mines should have such a yearly return, the world would go crazy 

 over the speculation. And yet right here, quietly and surely, the re- 

 turns come to us and nothing more is said. I could give you hundreds 

 of instances where the fruit crop paid more than the farm was worth — 

 sometimes $60, $80, $100, $150 or even $200 per acre. 



You should not be ignorant of the troubles, and discouragements, 

 and trials, and work, and worry that it takes to succeed, for they have 

 often been brought before you in a very plain and forcible manner; 

 but I would have yon know that pluck, perseverence, energy, push, 

 intelligence and business management will bring success, if we faint 

 not. You need not fear of having a business that will develop the 

 body and not the head. There is enough to learn in any of the de- 

 partments of horticulture to keep you busy all your life. The study 

 of botany, of entomology, of chemistry, of geology, ornithology, flori- 

 culture, landscape gardening, nursery, forestry, pomology, pathology, 

 will give you all you can do in one life. 



OUR SOCIETY AND ITS REPORTS. 



Last week I attended the meeting of the Arkansas Horticultural 

 Society in Bentonville, Ark. Your Secretary was greeted most cor- 

 dially and hospitably, because they knew our Society, if they did not 

 know me. I found there the work we had been doing, and the reports 

 we had been printing year after year for 15 years had made the 

 reputation of this society, and Missouri Society was a household 

 word among them and a model they wished to patern after. Again I 

 visited the Kansas society and there the knowledge of our Society had 

 preceded me, and they were striving to follow in its footsteps. Last 

 September I attended the meeting of American Pomological Society 

 at Columbus, O., and was happy indeed to find that there the delegates 

 from 23 states and Canada all knew all about the Missouri State So- 



