WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 265 



As has been the growth in the small fruits, grapes, peaches, pears, 

 apples, so has it been in the vegetable line, among our flowers, with 

 the ornamentals, and the only thing we are now lacking in is the plan of 

 marketing and the cost and means of transportation. 



Our transportation problem is the one serious question which now 

 confronts the fruit-grower. There are markets in abundance all over 

 our land, if we but had the means of reaching them. 



It will take every member ot our society and every fruit-grower in- 

 terested to settle this matter. When we see such organizations springing 

 up as the one just organized at Carthage with the sole object of secur- 

 ing transportation rates to the various markets, when they bring these 

 facts to bear upon our express companies, with statistics of what they 

 will probably have for shipment, when they show these companies that 

 it is so many thousand pounds shipment at a low rate and nothing to 

 ship at the high rate, then we shall see the companies giving aid and 

 assistance in every way possible. 



Quick, cheap transportation is one thing now to be desired for the 

 fruit-grower ; this, with the honest commission man to do his work 

 well, and you can scarcely realize what an amount of fruit could be and 

 would be grown. But of these we shall have a report from our trans- 

 portation committee, and then discuss them. 



And w. at of the ornamental in the past? Outside of the cities, 

 and large cities at that, we saw very little of flowers or ornamental 

 planting. But now you will in many of our villages and on our larger 

 farms see indications of landscape gardening or planting in a judicious 

 and systematic whole. 



It is a long step in the right direction where we see such yards 

 and lawns as are seen in many parts of our State. 



Where we used to see one or two straggling evergreens trimmed 

 up like a street tree, now we see hundreds of them scattered every- 

 where. 



In our rush for fruit-planting, I beg of you, friends, that you for- 

 get not the ornamenting of your grounds. 



But we see a general awakening everywhere in horticulture in all 

 its phases, branches, divisions or departments. 



You will see improvements in our land and its manner of cultiva- 

 tion, a change in our class of tools and horticultural contrivances, a 

 difference in -manner of propagating and of the amount propagated, a 

 contrast in the orchards as now planted for commercial purposes from 

 those of twenty-five years ago, new ideas about care, cultivation and 

 pruning our orchards, a much needed change in the number of varieties 



