66 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



these trifling bugs: his crop is taken and he has plenty of time to 

 consider how little he is master of his own field. The pear grower 

 in any and all of these states knows varieties for all tastes and sea- 

 sons, and as fascinating as the cheek of beauty; and golden profits 

 beckon him to plant and prune and cultivate and wait, until with- 

 in the very portals of siiccess, he sees that mysterious and irresisti- 

 ble pestilence we call "blight" sweeping like a demon of destroy- 

 ing vengeance through the beautiful orchard, and the pear grower 

 is as powerless as the other unfortunates when he meets his enemy. 

 But the world is hungry for peaches, and for strawberries, and 

 for pears, and we must grow them, and we shall grow them to meet 

 this want. These difficulties must be surmounted or avoided. 



NOMENCLATURE. 



Most pomologists have long appreciated the extreme ill taste 

 and absurdity of so many of our fruit names. So far as it is 

 practicable without creating confusion, our nomenclature should be 

 simplified. Many of the established names can be reduced without 

 any loss of significance ; others cannot. But in all future naming 

 we should rigidly discountenance complex, meaningless, or vulgar 

 designations. Another careless feature in nomenclature will be 

 fully illustrated by my calling your attention to two of our most 

 *23romising new strawberries. The Mrs. Garfield is a staminate 

 plant, while the Daniel Boone is a pistillate plant. What a happy 

 improvement it would be if the names of these and all other 

 varieties which bear the names of persons should correctly suggest 

 the sex of the variety. I commend to your attention the proj)o- 

 sitions for reform in this matter which were so ably presented by 

 President Wilder in his late address to the American Pomological 

 society, a copy of which is herewith submitted. 



THE APPLE AND INSECTS. 



The great fruit crop of this country and of the world is the 

 apple. It can be grown almost everywhere. It is the fruit of the 

 j)alace and of the cottage. Everybody wants apples. A general 

 destruction of apples would be a workVs misfortune. And yet a 

 single enemy destroys annually three-fourths or more of the apples 

 produced. These millions of bushels of blessed God-given apples, 

 which should make millions of children happy and healthy ; which 

 should load every table on the continent with beautiful fragrant 

 food ; this fruit of paradise ; this fruit of all civilized jieoples, is 

 given over to the riot and destruction of loathsome worms ! But 

 here is an evil that we understand. Here is an enemy whose ways 



