MEETmG AT DOUGJ.AS, JUJNE, 188T. 



Tuesday Evening Session, 



The meetings of the society were held in the public school building^, 

 except in the evening, when the pleasant auditorium of the Congregational 

 church was used. The local attendance was large at all times, having never 

 been exceeded, with perhaps one exception, in the society's history. 



The session Tuesday evening, called to order by President Phillips, was 

 begun with a duet, *'Fly Away Birdling," by Misses Mary Andrus and 

 Hattie Spencer, with Miss Belle Spencer as organist. Their voices were highly 

 pleasing and their execution of a quality doing them great credit. 



The Rev. E. Andrus made fervent and appropriate prayer. 



ADDEESS OF WELCOME. 



J. F. Taylor of Douglas, having been appointed to make the address of 

 welcome, spoke thus: 



Mr. President and Gentlemen — You have come to us as representatives 

 of the West Michigan Fruit Growers' Association. "We heartily recognize 

 your mission, and I am authorized by the fruit growers of Ganges, Saugatuck, 

 and Douglas to welcome you to our hospitalities and our homes during the 

 continuance of this meeting. We have not much to offer you, except lunch 

 and lodging, in return for the wisdom and experience you may leave us for 

 future use in our fructiferous surroundings. This is the first gathering of 

 the kind you represent ever held among our people, and you may be assured 

 we are hungering and thirsting for a feast on the kiiowledge of those who 

 have grown gray in exploring the broad fields of pomology. In choosing this 

 fruitful vocation, which has proved to be an appetizer to bring us together 

 for a feast, we wish to recognize the fact that men are everywhere, to a very 

 large extent, the creatures of their own environment. Nor are these environ- 

 ments entirely arbitrary. They are greatly modified by our choices and 

 changed by our acts of loyalty or disloyalty to the Moral Governor of the 

 universe. It was manifestly so with the great progenitor of our race. His 

 fruitful surroundings, with the fair hand that handled them in their beauty, 

 proved a temptation greater than he could bear, and hence brought toil and 

 trouble on all his descendants. We share their fate. The thorns, and the 

 thistles, and the briars which so increased his labor, as the first results of 

 evil, are now easily subdued by gang plows and wheel cultivators. But in 

 these days of evolution and progress they have made their appearance in 

 numberless diseases and insects preying upon trees and plants and fruits of 



