120 ANNUAL REPORT 



do^s not now survive. The second agricultural society in America 

 was the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, formed 

 in 1792, whose delegates honor us with their presence. But to 

 confine myself to horticultural societies. The first, still existing, 

 in America was the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, estab- 

 lished in 1827; the second was the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society, formed in 1829. The first national pomological organi- 

 zation of which we have any knowledge was the American Pomo- 

 logical Society, whose quarter centennial we this day celebrate. 

 Now there are more than 1,000 agricultural, horticultural and kin- 

 dred associations registered on the "books of the department at 

 Washington. 



" You have been pleased to allude to me in connection with 

 horticulture as well as pomology. "Well, sir, let me say that, 

 Irom my earliest years, I can not remember the time when I did 

 not love the cultivation of the soil, and the more I am brought 

 into communion with nature, the more I am full of gratitude to 

 the Giver of all good that He gave me a love for fruits and 

 flowers, and cast my lot where I might enjoy them and have 

 sweet intercourse with these lovely objects of creation. And 

 who does not look with wonder and admiration on the infinitude, 

 beauty and perfection of these works of the Hand Divine. The 

 enameled blossom bespangling the orchard with starry spray 

 scarcely less numerous than the glittering host above, dancing 

 in rainbow hues and flinging on the breeze a fragrance richer 

 than Ceylon's Isles, sweet harbinger of bountiful harvest; the 

 luscious fruits, God's best gift to man, save woman — the velvet 

 peach, mantled with beauty's softest blush, and vieing with the 

 oriency of the morning; the delicious plum, veiled with silvery 

 bloom over robes of purple or cloth of vegetable gold; the royal 

 grape, the brilliant cherry, the melting pear and the burnished 

 apple, tempting human taste from the mother of our race to her 

 last fair daughter. But what pencil can sketch the changing 

 hues, the magnificence and glory when Pomona pours from her 

 ever-flowing lap the very treasures of the ripening year. Here 

 are creatious originally pronounced 'very good.' Here are 

 beauties which fade only to reappear again. 



''From the beginning there seems to have been an intimate 

 connection between trees and man. Trees are spoken of as 

 though man could not live without them, as though divine 

 beneficence had given them to us as companions for life, and as 

 emblems of all the beautiful in imagery, excellent in character, or 



