nnual eeting, 
Dec. 5-8, 1899. 
JOURNAL OF THE THIRTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEETING 
OF THE MINNESOTA STATE HORTICUL- 
TURAL SOCIETY. 
[For program of this meeting see page 473, Report of 1898.] 
The meeting was called to order by the president, W. W. Pen- 
dergast, at 10 o’clock, in the rooms of the county commissioners 
of Hennepin county, and an invocation was offered by Rev. T. A. 
Turner, late chaplain of the 15th Minn. Vol. Inf. 
GREETING BY THE PRESIDENT. 
W. W. PENDERGAST, HUTCHINSON. 
I see the first thing on the program is a greeting by the president. Our 
program is so crowded, we have got so much to do, that I do not think it 
best to take up your time in talking of those things which will not add to 
the usefulness of the society. 
We all feel that it is a good thing for us to get together once or twice a 
year and compare notes and see what each one has learned and all the new 
things that he has discovered in his work. It is not only a great pleasure, 
but it is of the greatest benefit and profit to us. One of the members this 
morning was telling me how a neighbor of his, a bright, sensible man, said 
to him what a fool he should have been if he could not have gone to some- 
body that knew more than he did with his tough and knotty questions. He 
might wait a whole lifetime to get one question answered, the same as I felt 
at one time with reference to a question in geography. For years I was at 
a loss to know why that little point projects out from the state in the north- 
ern part of Minnesota in the Lake of the Woods region. I went to every- 
body whom I thought would know, but nobody could answer that question. 
If -I could have found somebody that knew he could have, answered that - 
question in a minute, and all would have been satisfactory, for I would have 
thought it over and fixed it in my mind. That brings us to an important 
thing. We can learn a great many things if we do not let them go in at 
one ear and out at the other. Our mothers had no trouble in coloring 
