SUMMER MEETING, 1897, 269 



standing the jack rabbit and other disadvantages mentioned, the 

 farmer has the most advantag-eoua position. I am sorry there are 

 not more members of the Park Board present. We are trying- to 

 beautify our city. A great city without parks is a dismal sort of a 

 place. In behalf of the board of which I am a member, we do re- 

 cognize the obligation which we are under to you. We realize the 

 enthusiasm you are putting into the people in reference to this 

 whole subject. Without you I don't know how aboriculture, horti- 

 culture or any of these arts could prosper, and it is the work that 

 you have done that has called park boards into existence. Out of it 

 all there will come a growth and a development and a beautifying 

 of our cities that will make them to bud and blossom as the rose 

 and will give the people those beneficent breathing places we call 

 parks." 



JACOB W. MANNING. 



Jacob W. Manning, a veteran horticulturist from Reading, Mas- 

 sachusetts, was opportunely present, and greeted the society in a 

 few pleasant words. " I was in your state, he said," in 1866, in Roch- 

 ester, where I saw your first agricultural fair. Mr. Harris was there 

 with about the first apples the state had produced. I have been 

 here at different times since. The greatest changes I see are in the 

 growth of your forests. I think the forests are increasing here, as 

 they are in the East. I was in your city in 1866 when you had 9,000 

 population here. In Massachusetts we have a society dating back 

 to 1829. We carry on our society at a cost of some $15,000 or $20,000 

 per annum. Its officers are all paid, and even some of its commit- 

 tees. We have a nice hall, but want and need a larger one. We 

 have a property that is worth about a million dollars, and are prob- 

 ably the only horticultural society in the country that possess 

 much wealth. I have been a meinber of our society more than forty 

 years, so far back that Minnesota was scarcely then heard of. I 

 think that nothing has changed the face of your state so much in 

 these years as the growth of the trees." 



Mr. J. S. Harris, begging the privilege to add a few words, said, " I 

 hoped to live long enough to see our horticultural society on such 

 a basis that it could not be shaken by anj^ storm. We already have 

 about as many in numbers as any other society in the Union, but 

 I want to see it the largest, inost influential society in the country. 

 This winter we had some damper put upon our work. They did not 

 mean us any harm, but when they heard we had 400 or 500 members 

 they thought we were strong enough to take care of ourselves. I 

 hope that by the time of the annual meeting we will all work so 

 faithfvxlly that we will number 1,000, and if we can go on doubling 

 up the next few years we can have such a hall as Mr. Manning tells 

 us of and have something to hand down to our children." 



The exercises of the afternoon closed with a recitation, " The First 

 Minnesota at Gett3^sburg," by Miss Dixie Smith. Miss Smith has 

 many times favored the society in this way and added greatly to 

 the pleasure of its exercises, but her theme appealed especially to 

 the hearts of the people this time, and it seemed as though she had 

 never before spoken so eloquently or so stirred her audience. 



