358 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



must have a lialf dozen linos of tools. Many a man is a bankrupt from trying 

 to do this. A specialty makes it possible for everyone to own a complete line 

 of tools, to successfully carry on his branch of business. The specialist's 

 hous do not eat his lambs, his colts do not get on a barbed-wire fence, his 

 cows do not browse his apple trees. The specialist gets a better price for his 

 products, for he knows the demands of the markets and meets them. He 

 produces a better article than his neiglibor, the mixed farmer. The specialist's 

 pigs grow large in bone and muscle, in comfortable quarters, during the 

 winter; they increase in weight at slight expense on clover in the summer; 

 they are topped off with old corn, ground and cooked, and in August, at the 

 top of the market, they bring the highest price, in a lump, so it can be felt 

 and the money goes to pay off the mortgage or to lengthen the bank account. 

 The specialist's Hambletonian colt brings him $1,000, while his neighbor's 

 brings $250. The specialist's potatoes are a mine of gold, while the bugs and 

 the drought make buyers of the mixed farmers. Curculio and borer and 

 yellows and moths and worms and bacteria, sting and bore and kill and de- 

 vour and annihilate the trees, and the fruit and foliage thereof, belonging to 

 the mixed farmer, while the specialist wears diamonds, as do his sisters and 

 his cousins and his aunts. 



This being very desirable, we welcome you as a society seeking to bring 

 about this state of affairs among us. It is becoming proverbial that the 

 pomologists and their wives and daughters are the best dressed of all our 

 citizens. They well know that fruit is the cause of this and they rejoice 

 and are proud of the knowledge ; but did it ever occur to them that fruit is 

 the cause of all of us and all our ancestors wearing any clothes at all? 

 George Coleman has the authority of the holy scriptures for saying that 



Adam and Eve were, at the world's beginning, 

 Ashamed of nothing till they took to sinning, 

 But after Adam's step (the first was Eve's) 

 With sorrow big they sought the fig, 

 To cool their blushes with its hanging leaves— 

 Whereby we find that when all things were recent, 

 Till folks grew naughty they were barely decent. 

 This dress may date its origin from sin, 

 Which proves beyond a shadow of dispute 

 How many owe their livelihoods to fruit; 

 For fruit caused sin and sin brought shame. 

 And all through shame our dresses came. 

 Now liad not woman worked our fall, 

 How many who have trades and avocations 

 Would shut up shop in these our polished nations 

 And have no business to transact at all ? 



Thus we find, on looking the matter over, that about all there is in or 

 about us that is good is caused by fruit. Therefore, as a society bavins; for its 

 object the culture of luscious, heaUh-giviug fruits, we bid you thrice wel- 

 come. 



This was followed by a paper by Mr. LaFleur concerning fruit growing in 

 general. 



