92 ANNUAL REPORT 



plant gems of other soils, to manipulate, test and improve them 

 and then to give them to the people. Failures at first may be 

 the rule, success the exception, but nature will open up her 

 mine of treasures to those who carry the key to unlock them, 

 and as a reward a grateful jDeople will crown you public benefac- 

 tors, whoever of you develops any fruit until it will succeed and 

 then introduces it for the use of his neiglibor. The man who 

 gave us the Early Rose potato did more for this country than he 

 who discovered the gold of California. The man who develops 

 a hardy, good apple that shall succeed everywhere in the North- 

 west and fill the season from the last Duchess to the first 

 Strawberry, will do more for humanity thau the greatest phil- 

 anthropist who has ever lived, and earn a fame that will endure 

 long after granite monuments have crumbled into dust." 



C. L. Smith, of Minnesota, responded to the address of 

 welcome. A considerable portion of this session was used by 

 the Minnesota delegates in speaking words of encouragement, 

 reporting the workings of their society, explaining the objects, 

 methods, workings and probable results of the state and indi- 

 vidual horticultural experiment stations This was followed by 

 the reading and discussion of a novel and very interesting paper 

 by A. W. Sias, of Rochester, Minn., entitled ''Horticultural 

 Nuts to Crack." This paper called out a rambling discussion 

 on fruit, nursery trees, acclimatizing by taking seeds from the 

 most northern limits for the ideal fruit without seeds for our 

 descendants, who may in the course of time be toothless, the use 

 of thorns, etc. The discussion finally drifted toward forestry. 



At the evening session the delegates from Minnesota were 

 unanimously elected honorary life members of the society. This, 

 of course, called for a vote of thaiiks from the Minnesotians, and 

 an acknowledgment of the honor shown to our Society. Follow- 

 ing this the president read his annual address, an able document, 

 in which he alluded to fruit culture as having become a great 

 and leading industry in all other par:s of the c >untry, and so im- 

 portant as to demand our first attention. Bat there is no other 

 subject that comes before the people of this Territory where they 

 are more at sea than in the growing of fruits. He spoke at length 

 upon the adaptation of varieties, and s lid it might require a 

 vast amount of experiment, and years of time before a sufficient 

 number of varieties were found that wer^ adapted to every part 

 of the vast country, and that every man couM plant with a cer- 

 tainty of succeeding with them. The subjects of experimental 



