xili. 
of what, to me, is an indispensable diet—fruit. I may be wrong in my ideas about food 
but I have often thought that if farmers would eat less fat pork and more fruit they 
would be healthier and happier if not better looking than they are. This would certainly 
be the case if there is truth in the adage that “like begets like.” But about the health- 
fulness of fruit, there can be no doubt about the elevating influence of horticultural pur- 
suits, and I believe it to be the duty of every member of this Association to do all he can 
to interest and instruct his neighbors in these pursuits both by precept and example. 
Show them your own well-kept grounds stocked with the best trees, shrubs and plants 
that your means will afford, give them a taste of your best fruits, ask them to attend our 
meetings, show them The Canadian Horticultwrist and annual report, and persuade them 
to become members of our Association. I believe if our farmers could be induced to 
take more interest in these things, and surround their homes with these attractions, we 
should hear less complaints about their sons and daughters leaving the farm to engage in 
other pursuits. Perhaps I am taxing your patience, still I would !ike to say a word in 
regard to varieties of fruits and their improvement. 
If we look over the thirty years of the past we can recollect a great many varieties, 
particularly of grapes and small fruits, that have been introduced to us with a “ oreat 
flourish of trumpets’’ by their friends or persons interested in the sale of the plants, 
which have been received and cared for at great expense, and we have found that a ma- 
jority of them, like some of the human species, have not improved on acquaintance, and 
we have been obliged to discard them, while a comparative few have come to stay, and 
are_an improvement on the older varieties. These have amply repaid us for the time 
and money bestowed upon them, still we can but feel that this continual testing of new 
varieties is a constant strain upon our time and purse, and as testing new fruits is a work 
that benefits the whole country I do not see why our government should not assist us in 
this work. But it may be said by some that we have agricultural and experimental 
farms already for doing this work, at Guelph and Ottawa. I would ask what can be 
done at either of these places in testing tender varieties of apples, pears, plums or 
cherries, much less grapes, peaches, apricots, nectrines, etc.? I know that Professor 
Saunders and his staft are doing a great work in bringing out varieties adapted to the 
~ colder parts of the province, and his experiments in hybridizing strawberries, raspberries, 
gooseberries, currants, etc., will undoubtedly be of great benefit to us here. I had the 
pleasure, during the raspberry season, of visiting the experimental farm at Ottawa and 
seeing some of the marvellous results of his labors and testing. Of the hundreds of 
varieties of this delicious fruit which he has produced by hybridizing and the careful 
selection of varieties, and I have no hesitation in saying that many will prove superior 
in many respects to anything that we now have in cultivation, and I think the same will 
prove true in many other of his fruits. I sincerely believe that the results he has already 
achieved will more than pay the country for all the expenses incurred in the horticultural 
department of the experimental farm, and his work has but just began. I believe if we 
had an experimental ground carefully conducted somewhere in Southern Ontario, where 
our tender fruit trees, shrubs and plants could be grown and tested, and where only 
varieties that were worthy of cultivation would be recommended, it would be a great 
