THE BANQUET. 43: 
America; Professor Hugo de Vries, of the University of Amsterdam ; and 
Monsieur Henry de Vilmorin, Vice-President of the Société Nationale 
d’ Horticulture de France. 
Mr. Hersert J. Wesser :—Sir Trevor Lawrence, your Excellencies, 
my Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—It gives me the greatest pleasure to 
have this honour of addressing you this evening, and I have furthermore 
pleasure in bringing to you across the seas the greeting—the most 
friendly greeting—of the Secretary of Agriculture of America, who has 
the greatest hopes for the future of horticulture and in the final develop- 
ment and advancement of all its allied industries, not only in America 
and the United States, but in the entire world. He looks upon our 
present condition as simply a formative one, and likely to lead to more 
important advancement and results, and in this I think the experience of 
this Conference bears our Secretary out. It seems to me, from what has 
been brought out at our meetings, that we are on the eve of a great 
advancement, and what has been done is simply a herald of the advance 
that is to come in the future. It is, however, a great misfortune, as was 
so forcibly brought out in our meeting this afternoon, that there is no 
way by which the originator of a new fruit or flower can reap the equiva- 
lent benefit. There is no doubt a certain amount of honour and pleasure 
and personal satisfaction in having originated something of this kind ; 
but, after all, that is not quite sufficient reward. There should be more 
just and satisfactory recompense at the same time. How this can be 
brought about, gentlemen, is, of course, matter for consideration, but it 
lies with us to largely compensate the man—the originator of a new fruit 
or flower—to give him his just dues. It seems to me that the man 
who in any way lightens the struggle of humanity, or puts bread into the 
mouths of the starving, by improving our crops or giving us better yields, 
more appetising fruits or more delightsome flowers, is worthy of more 
honour than the man who invents a new pill, or a new kind of soap, or 
who writes a new novel, or than the man who makes war. After all, 
we should be at peace. We scientific men are at peace with one another. 
Science is an international thing. What we have to do is to popularise 
our work so that any development may meet with its just reward; and 
it seems to me I can look forward into the very near future and see the 
time rapidly approaching when a new discovery in horticulture in this 
land will meet its just recompense of reward. 
Professor Huco pE Vrirs :—Mr. Chairman, your Excellencies, my 
Lord, Ladies, and Gentlemen,—One of the ideas of this Conference that has 
struck me most has been the desire to bring together men of science 
and of horticultural practice to exchange views. Almost all the papers 
showed clearly this tendency. Formerly there was very little feeling of 
community or of continuity between practice and science, but now on both 
sides this estrangement is being diminished, and the same sort of bonds 
that have brought engineering and electricity and all applied sciences 
to act together, in order to allow such magnificent results, must be 
brought into action in order to unite scientific and practical horti- 
culturists in the realms of hybridisation. It seems that the objects we 
aim at are not to be so soon reached as we all wish. But what I have 
most enjoyed in this Conference is to see that feeling of fellowship 
