62 ANJilUAL HEPORT 



reviewed as we meet to greet each other in friendly discussion for 

 improvement; for here it is we brush away the cobwebs from our 

 minds, obtained by recluseness from the world, and receive new 

 impulses, thoughts and conceptions of the possibilities and impossi- 

 bilities of this labor of love to which so many of us have devoted our 

 time, money and attention in trying to develop something that will 

 be of use to future generations. 



We come here this evening to take a retrospective view of the work 

 of the past year and try to discern wherein it has been successful, 

 and, if possible, the cause of our failures. Here we should be willing 

 to discuss freely what have been our plans of operation, that we 

 may develop or impart information concerning the progress at- 

 tained, or describe new methods adopted in conducting our particular 

 industry. If we have made failures, it is here we should be willing to 

 discuss them, and, if possible, discover their causes. If we have been 

 successful in producing something better than our neighbors, it is 

 here we should try to impart that knowledge for the improvement of 

 the nrhole; unless we believe in that trite but true saying, *'Itis 

 always safe to learn, even from our enemies — seldom safe to instruct 

 even our friends." As a rule our greatest ambition should be to place 

 the knowledge we possess in the cultivation and management of our 

 different crops at the disposal of all, then we shall be giving and 

 receiving; this will be improvement in the right direction. Our new 

 theories, new methods, new experiments are of little value to the 

 world at large unless we are willing to have broad gauge ideas and 

 spread them far and wide, imparting freely to each other what we 

 have discovered that will be of value to mankind. 



It is a true saying that those can direct best who can do best; and 

 those can do best in any department of work who begin early in life, 

 and learn by first impressions and experience much that can be 

 learned in no other way. If this be true, we should endeavor to 

 awaken an enthusiasm for the performance of horticultural duties at 

 a very early age in the minds of the rising generation. This, it seems 

 to me, is an important move towards solving this problem of profita- 

 ble fruit raising. 



The thought forcibly impresses us of the amount of time and energy 

 that have been wasted by not understanding fully the relation or 

 dependence of one part of the work upon another Correct princi- 

 ples and ideas should be instilled into our minds at the beginning of 

 our education, or v^^e shall sooner or later be on the wrong road to 

 Success. A very dull scholar is he who cannot learn some new truth 



