PRESIDENT’S ANNUAL ADDRESS. 13 
been adherent to it during all those years of cultivation. The advances that 
are made, as the advance in wheat cultivation, are made by crossing, and 
then when we have a cross that promises better than anything we have had 
yet make the most of that. In crosses of this kind there will be sports. 
You go into a wheat field and once in a while you will see a stalk six or 
eight inches higher than the rest; the heads will be longer and the straw will 
be stiffer. Through such sports some of the best varieties of wheat have 
been established. A few heads were sent me from Oregon that had been 
cultivated in this way. There was only a single stalk to begin with in a large 
field, and that was carefully gathered and planted, and the product was 
planted again and again, so that that variety has crowded out all the old 
ones that they were raising in that vicinity. So it is with the strawberry, our 
best varieties coming from seedlings and perhaps sports at that. We have 
got to keep digging away in this with our seedlings, with our crosses, with 
foreign varieties, in every way that we possibly can, and by and by we will 
find something that is a little better than what we have now, and just as 
soon as we catch that we have got just what we have been striving for. If 
you have anything of value send it right to these men who are interested as 
you and I are in the betterment of our fruit products, and they will see to 
it that that seed is never lost. 
I have taken up more time than I expected to take, but in closing I want 
to say that it seems to me there are no people belonging to any other organ- 
ization in this state or the Northwest that are so disinterestedly trying to do 
something that will redound to the credit of the state and to the happiness of 
the individual as is done in the very course we are pursuing, and all the mis- 
takes of the past must be made to play into the hands of the future. When 
we have gone wrong we must try not only hereafter to avoid that mistake, 
but we must see to it that we do not make other similar ones. We must see 
how easy it is to go wreng. An old man said to me at one time in Massa- 
chusetts: “‘There is a straight and right path before every one that he must 
follow. It is his only true course, and just as soon as he steps aside from that 
path out into the tangled brush and thickets, wandering lost down in the 
tangle of the forest and in the miasma of the swamps, where the serpents 
hiss and vipers crawl—just as soon as he gets out of the path he is on the 
devil’s ground, and the devil has got his traps set all over it, and the erring 
victim does not know how soon he will put his foot in a trap and get 
caught.” 
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON PRESIDENT’S ANNUAL 
ADDRESS. 
Your committee appointed to consider the address of the president con- 
gratulate the society on his able and comprehensive address and recom- 
mend that it be given an early publication in the Horticulturist. It also 
recommends that a committee consisting of the president, secretary and 
Professor S. B. Green be appointed to carry out the suggestion of the presi- 
dent that so far as possible the horticultural societies of Wisconsin, Minne- 
sota and the two Dakotas co-operate and do experimental work along differ- 
ent lines to avoid waste of effort and duplication of experiments, the duty of 
the committee being to investigate the extent to which such co-operation 
is possible, and report at the next summer meeting. A. G. WILcox, 
O. M. Lorp, 
W. H. Eppy, 
Committee. 
