134 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



today. It does not take so long for the trees to grow. A lifetime 

 is long when you look ahead, but it is very short when you look 

 back. We of this association are trying to encourage the people 

 to plant trees. We want to help the forestry board first. Then 

 we want to help the people plant trees for their own use, plant them 

 for the comfort they can get out of them. In a short trip I made 

 recently I was delighted to see the change made during the last 

 twenty-five years, yet I found many places where there was not a 

 tree or a shrub in sight, and I pitied those people. 



MINNESOTA FRUIT AT AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL 

 SOCIETY MEETING. 



WYMAN ELLIOT, MINNEAPOLIS. 



(A talk.) 



I suppose you all know that I went to Boston to attend the Amer- 

 ican Pomological meeting. I went down there for a purpose, and 

 that was to show the people of northeastern Canada and the United 

 States what we were doing in Minnesota in the way of growing 

 seedling apples and other fruits. I took commercial varieties and 

 seedlings, in all 184 plates. The larger proportion of them were 

 seedHng apples. There was one collection from the orchard of Mr. 

 T. E. Perkins, of Red Wing, that consisted of 109 plates. That was 

 put upon one table by itself, and when I tell you that there was 

 nothing in that old horticultural hall that received one-half the at- 

 tention that that collection of seedlings received you may think I 

 am making a pretty broad statement. That is a fact. I had my son 

 with me to help me put up and arrange the fruit and to answer the 

 questions of people who were interested in our exhibit, and it kept 

 two of us busy most of the time when we were in sight answering 

 questions about the collection of fruit, and men who had devoted 

 their whole lives to the interest of pomology came to me and said 

 they had never seen any production placed upon the exhibition table 

 that would equal that. When you come to consider the fact that 

 out of an entire possibility of 174 trees, the seed from which they 

 were produced being planted only ten years ago, and selecting from 

 the 132 fruiting this year 109 plates to take down to make an ex- 

 hibition and which brought back the Wilder medal, you may be sure 

 that it was a pretty good advertisement for Minnesota. 



I have the honor and the great pleasure of presenting to this 

 society the Wilder medal. (Exhibiting the medal.) It is the high- 

 est form of award that the American Pomological Association has 

 to present to the American public. It is considered by every organi- 

 zation of this kind the highest honor and something of the greatest 

 value of anything they can get in the United States. To give you 

 a short description of it : On one side is a profile of Marshall P. 

 Wilder, who was instrumental in organizing the American Pomo- 

 logical Association in 1848. On the reverse side is engraved "Min- 

 nesota Horticultural Society for Minnesota Seedling Apples." When 

 I came back with the announcement that we had received the medal 

 some of the reporters got hold of it and came to interview me, and 



