STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 33 



ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 

 McLEOD COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



[From the Hutchinson Lender.] 



Fellow Members of the McLeod County Horticultural Society, Ladies 

 and Gentlemen ; 



It gives me pleasure on this second anniversary of our organization 

 to note the increased interest that is being taken by our people in 

 horticulture, forest planting and floriculture. From the woods of 

 Winsted, from the prairies of Sumter and Lynn, and from the beauti- 

 ful lakes north of this town — we hear of success in fruit culture. 

 Since t commenced the cultivation of fruit for market, about seven 

 years since, a great change has taken place. Then few berries were in 

 our markets and it was hard work to sell the sixteen dollars' worth I 

 had to spare. While the past season the hundred bushels I had for 

 sale did not begin to fill the demand, and hundreds of cases were 

 shipped from the twin cities to towns west of us. As soon as the 

 frosts of winter are gone and our merry songsters return from the 

 sunny South, the queen of berries, the strawberries, makes its ap- 

 pearance in our markets and holds the fort until about the fourth of 

 July. It has been reported that two million boxes were received in 

 St. Paul and Minneapolis in one season, besides the hundreds of 

 bushels of home grown berries. Notwithstanding the great increase 

 in production, prices were good and demand better the past season 

 than for the two previous years. The demand for and production of 

 other small fruits has increased in the same ratio. Mr. Latham, of 

 Excelsior, found a ready market for his eighteen tons of grapes at fair 

 prices. Raspberries and blackberries are being grown by the acre 

 almost at your very doors, with as much or more certainty and a little 

 more labor than corn. Yet how few of our people have a supply. 



It is the mission of horticultural societies to show the people how 

 to raise these most delicious of fruits, as well as to warn them of hum- 

 bug and swindling tree-peddlers. Methinks if three-fourths of the 

 money spent in this country for dead apple trees had been spent for 

 small fruit plants and the other fourth for good horticultural books 

 and papers, every family owning land could have plenty of fruit from 

 its own vine and plant. The appetite for fruit is natural, and should 

 be supplied. 



Your little two-year old child is sitting at the table; on one side of 

 his plate is a nice dish of berries and a rosy cheeked apple, on the other 

 sije a plug of tobacco. I need not tell you which it would seize aud. 

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