HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 257 



DISCUSSION. 



Col. Stevens inquired, if it would not be in order to offer a res- 

 olution requesting that the money appropriated by the legisla- 

 ture for the support of the Excelsior experiment station be 

 transferred to that at Owatonna. The Society had received no 

 reports from the former station for some time. 



Mr. Pearse inquired if Mr. Gideon was still under jDay by the 

 state. 



President Elliot stated that he was. 



Prof. Porter said that he would like to be heard briefly in 

 regard to the Excelsior station. That station was the creation 

 of this Society; without its aid there never would have been one 

 there; but the condition of things there now was very unsatis- 

 factory. So far as he was concerned and his connection with it, 

 he said he was neither fish, flesh nor fowl, nor even ''red herring." 

 and never had been: he had several years ago washed his hands 

 of the whole affair, as far as possible. As the matter now stood, 

 without some additional legislation the Society was powerless, 

 and the board of regents, in whose hands the management of 

 that station was placed, were also powerless. Nothing could be 

 done with reference to it but by legislative action. The bill 

 ■creating that station was very peculiarly framed. It was well 

 understood the station was created not so much for the purpose 

 of benefiting horticulture in Minnesota as it was to pension off a 

 man who had been devoting twenty-five or thirty years of his life 

 to horticulture and was in embarrassed circumstances, who had 

 introduced the Wealthy apple, and which was a very great ac- 

 quisition to the pomology of the country. It was no more than 

 proper and right that the Society should recognize the efforts of 

 Mr. Gideon, and the state should, as it were, make a donation to 

 him. That was practically what it amounted to. The older 

 members of the Society of course understand all the details con- 

 nected with the organization of that station, the pressing of the 

 matter through the legislature, the annual appropriation of 

 .^1,000 and the naming of Mr. Gideon as the beneficiary of that 

 appropriation. But there was the point that lead to the embar- 

 rassment. In order to make somebody responsible for its man- 

 agement they put it into the hands of the regents of the uni- 

 versity and requested the board to purchase this land and equip 

 it. The board did so out of the current expense fund of the 

 university; so it belongs neither to the state nor to the Society, 

 Vol. IV— 33. 



