WINTER MEETING. 205 



similar uDsprayed young orchards in the neighborhood early develop 

 the leaf fangi.Jand, become breeding grounds for insects. In this, as in 

 most other cases, prevention is better than cure. 



J. C. Whitten, 

 Horticulturist Mo. Exp. Station, Columbia, Mo. 



Thinning Fruit — Its Benefit to Size, Color, Quality and 

 Quantity of the Fruit, and to the Life of the Trees. 



A SYMPOSIUM. 



This is the subject assigned me by your Secretary. It is one of 

 depth, breadth and magnitude ; and it means much or little, as it is 

 accorded acceptance or the reverse. No one realizes more than I do 

 that nothing new can be told you about it; and the testimony I am to 

 submit is offered only as line upon line, precept upon precept, here a 

 little and there a little, that your good minds may once in a while be 

 stirred to an effort to remove one of the obstacles in your way, and 

 one impediment to your success. 



Success involves profit, a paying profit; and this, in the very 

 nature of things, is the result of labor, enterprise and skill. We have 

 outlined the day when chance has either part or lot in matters of busi- 

 ness. We succeed by the exercise of our own genius, or fail for want 

 of knowing how. Fine horses, fine cattle, fine hogs and fine fruits are 

 all the products of man. As we find them in their native states they 

 are as dissimilar from those in the show yards or on our tables as the 

 wild almond from our noblest peach, the wild hog from our finest pure 

 bloods, or the Indian pony from our fleetest trotter. The one is nature's 

 product without man's training, and the other the evidence of the Cre- 

 ator's wisdom in giving man charge over the beasts of the field, the 

 fowl of the air, the fish of the seas, and over every living thing. 



The law of progression is a part of man's nature, but is unknown 

 to any other part or division of the animate world, or to anything hav- 

 ing life. Neither wild animals, wUd fruits, nor wild flowers know any 

 law of progression ; the wild crab and cherry remain today as they 

 were thousands of years ago, and the same is true of wild animals. 

 But man has too the opposite law, that of retrogression, and its pace 

 is a much more rapid one than that of progression ; and his improved 

 stock, fruits, flowers, and even his own kind will go back by neglect 

 much more rapidly than they went forward by care, skill and attention. 

 Hence, an animal, a tree or plant will, when left to itself, degenerate^ 



