WINTER MEETING. 253 



/iesolced. By State Society of Horticulture of Missouri, In Thirty -seventli session assem- 

 bled, that as the apple acreage of the State has reached such Immense proportions In 

 Missouri, and prospective annual yield of such magnitude that it is necessary to protect 

 the orchardlsts In selling their crop to have reliable data of conditions of crops, from 

 blooming to maturity, acreage and variety that each producer of apples may know, the 

 supply, and anticipate the demand, so as to realize a fair market value upon sales; 



2n(l, That the General Assembly of Missouri be petitioned to enact a law requiring 

 and compelling each county or township assessor to list accurately every orchard in the 

 State al)ove 100 trees, noting variety, age, condition, time of ripening of each variety, 

 grown on prairie or timbered land, and file such lists In duplicate, one copy of which to be 

 filed with the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, who shall calculate the acreage 

 of apples, vatieties, age, etc. . and issue annually a bulletin, not less than 10,000 copies, for 

 the use of the members of the Horticultural Society of Missouri. 



Srd, That sufficient appropriation for publishing these bulletins be annually appro- 

 priated for the above use. 



A motion made by G. B. Lamm to amend the constitution, by mak- 

 ing the committee on horticultural education a standing committee, was 

 adopted. 



Land Ownership. 



While this subject may not be considered really a horticultural 

 one, yet land is the foundation of all horticulture, for it is the store- 

 house from which nearly all human wealth is drawn, since it nourishes 

 the animals and plants which supply mankind with food and clothing. 

 Besides the love of home and country and native land it is one of the 

 finest atributes of the human heart, for civil pride is and always has 

 been a great and controlling force among the affairs of men. 



Patriotism is grand and ennobling, and we need it to keep green 

 the memory of the fathers who gave us our free institutions, and to 

 preserve them from the hand of the spoiler. 



It was more than two thousand years after the first appearance of 

 man upon the earth, before there was any record of individual land 

 ownership, and the first we have was when Abraham bought the field 

 containing the cave of Machpelah of the Sons of Heath. In all coun- 

 tries the law of might prevailed, and people lived in large families, or 

 tribes, and cultivated as much land as they needed to supply their 

 wants, or the neighboring tribes would allow. 



About 1700 B. 0., Jesoph bought the land of the Egyptians for 

 the king, paying for it in coin. I suppose by this they must have 

 owned it individually, but I find no record of it in any history. 



The world was in such an unsettled condition that to own and 

 hold possession of land for any length of time was simply impossible ; 

 so much so that the promise to Abraham to give him or his descend- 

 ants the land of Canaan for a permanent possession, even after the 

 lapse of 400 years, was considered a great blessing — a promise that 



