TWO MINUTE SPEECHES. 195 



ing and deriving- knowledge from the experience of others, and from 

 what I have learned here I will endeavor to carry back to our society 

 as much information as I possibly can. I thank you for the kind re- 

 ception you have tendered me and hope you may have the greatest 

 measure of success. 



Mr. C. M. Loring: It is an honor to be a member of the Min- 

 nesota State Horticultural Society. Quite a number of years ago I 

 was an active member, but ill health made it necessary for me to be 

 away for sixteen consecutive years during the time you held your 

 annual meetings, and, therefore, I lost my membership. When I 

 think of where we started, of the few little crab apples that used to 

 be brought and put on the tables, and then look at the tables in the 

 exhibition room today, it seems to me every member in the associa- 

 tion should feel proud that he has been interested in aiding to ac- 

 complish that we now see before us. It hardly seems possible when 

 I look back and think how much discouragement we met with and 

 how little of success, that gentlemen like my friend Mr. Harris and 

 some of the older members here should have kept right on trying 

 to raise apples in the state of Minnesota. I can assure the gentle- 

 man from Manitoba who just spoke that there could be little more 

 reason for discouragement in his country than we had to contend 

 with in Minnesota. I know nearly every one was at work and in- 

 terested in horticulture in the early days, taking an interest in nearly 

 everything that came along. We bought trees from the Rochester 

 nurseries — and nearly everything we did buy came from Rochester — 

 we would plant them in the spring, and the next spring they were 

 dead. Of course, that is very discouraging. When we see what 

 is before us and what has been done by that grand old man, Mr. 

 Gideon, it certainly seems to me this society should raise a monu- 

 ment to his memory. 



Prof. N. E. Hansen (S. D.) : Instead of saying anything about 

 the meeting I wish to speak about something else. I have enjoyed 

 the meeting immensely, and I am always glad to come, but I want 

 to give you a sort of prophecy of a time say forty or fifty years in 

 the future. I believe by that time we will have found the apple we 

 are looking for, an apple that will keep until apples come again, that 

 will be hardy in the northern part of the state, even in Mr. Steven- 

 son's country and the Canadian Northwest. I believe very many of 

 our wild fruits will have been civilized and developed to a high state 

 of perfection, and that we will have a pomology of our own that 

 will give us a long list of fruits we have not today. 



The history of cultivated plants extends back, as in the case of 

 the apple, five thousand years ; from time immemorial the apple has 

 been cultivated in Europe and Asia. The history of that and a great 

 many other cultivated plants contains a great list. We find two 

 kinds of selection in plant life, one the unconscious and the other is 

 conscious. An unconscious selection is along the slow amelioration 

 of plants through the centuries, ages and ages, as generations come 

 and go, but in the last few generations conscious selection has been 

 practiced more and more, and we have come to breed plants like 

 animals, and the work i^ vastly quicker than it was in the early days 



