

WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 191 



Streak, Jonathan, Rome Beauty, Grimes' Golden, Smith's, Winesap, 

 Willow Twig, Clayton, York, Ben Davis, Gano, Babbitt, Minkler. 



Growth in flowers, flowering shrubs, trees, could you for a moment 

 think I could give you an inkling even of what the change has been in 

 this direction? But cast your mind backward twenty years, and then 

 think of what you see now in our best lawns, gardens, green-houses or 

 parks. The wonderful change in our roses, geraniums, chrysanthemums, 

 pansies, in our evergreens of endless variety, the new shrubs, herba- 

 ceous plants, trees — let your minds rest for a moment on what you 

 know of improvement, and then remember that is but a drop of the 

 whole. 



In vegetable growing of all kinds, you do not want me to even 

 mention them in this paper. 



In the southeast part of our State we have two or three little towns 

 which last season shipped nearly 4,000 carloads of melons all over our 

 State and Northern States. 



In forest tree planting, beginning in Nebraska a few years ago, un- 

 til now you see millions of trees planted each year in our new forests, 

 and on Arbor day we see fifteen States with their Governors and 

 other State officers (or if they don't they should be), with thousands 

 upon thousands of others all over our country planting trees, planting 

 trees. I tell you it will not be many years until Arbor day will be as 

 notable a holiday as Christmas, New Year's or Fourth of July, and the 

 whole country will be planting, planting, planting. 



School-house decorating and home-lawn planting is to-day as im- 

 portant a matter in our minds as was the old log cabin to our ancestors. 

 They both are a necessity. 



Horticulture, in its broadest sense, has spread all over our land; in 

 extent it reaches from the east to the west, from the north to the south ; 

 nearly every community is at this day more or less interested ; from 

 the barren plains of the west, which are gradually being reclaimed for 

 orcharding, to the cold of the north, where we are now growing some 

 good edible varieties of crab apples, in value from a few thousands of 

 dollars, until now we see the whole country filled with the produce ; 

 and from reports made ten years ago we find some of our States run- 

 ning up to the millions of dollars, and our State not far from the front. 

 A full crop of fruit in this State is to-day worth ten millions of dollars. 

 How we have improved in our condition ! To-day we find strawberry 

 growers, raspberry growers, grape growers, peach growers, apple grow- 

 ers ; the whole tendency of this age is to specialities, and we find our 

 fruit men not a whit behind the rest. When a man makes a business 



