HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 289 



FRIDAY EVENING SESSION. 



The meeting was called to order by O. F. Brand vice-preident, 

 A. W. Latham being chosen secretary pro tern. 



J. S. Harris read an article entitled "Three periods of suc- 

 cessful fruit growing in the northwest." 



E. H. S. Dartt followed with a report from the Owatonna exper- 

 iment station. It was accepted and ordered placed on file for pub- 

 lication. (It will be found elsewhere in this report). 



L. H. Wilcox then read the following paper on "Fruit Blos- 

 soms." 



FRUIT BLOSSOMS. 

 By L. H. Wilcox, of Hastings. 



The best means God has provided for the permanent improve- 

 ment of fruits, and their adaptation to dissimilar climatic condi- 

 tions is by their production from seeds under more favorable con- 

 ditions for attaining perfection in the qualities desired, than nature 

 itself supplies. In the blossoms we have the germs of future possi- 

 bilities before us, and the foundation on which with skill and 

 knowledge we can build their progressive development. 



In some lines of work, science has made commendable progress; 

 in others comparatively little. Mechanics, manufacturing, com- 

 merce and stock-breeding, have received the careful study of our 

 most brilliant minds for centuries, while scientific plant growth — 

 of more value to mankind than either, — lias received none of that 

 systematic study its importance demands. It has taken hundreds 

 of years of careful systematic breeding, to build up and improve 

 our standard breeds of cattle to their present excellence, and who 

 would now expect any desireable results to follow a single chance 

 cross of "scrubs", yet this is all our best horticulturists have been 

 doing; crossing plants of some individual merit, but of unknown 

 parentage and then perpetuating their defects by further outside 

 crosses, before any fixety of character had been obtained. If in 

 the crude way of these scientists some phenominal results have been 

 secured, what may we expect when scientific specialists endeavor 

 to attain our ideal, by placing present plants in the most favorable 

 condition for perfect development of the seed, and its surrounding 

 receptacle, and by methods now well known, develop desirable 

 and eliminate defective qualities as its successful progress requires. 



When we consider that the art of hybridizing species and cross- 

 ing varieties for their improvement is a recent discovery and is 

 practiced only in a chance hap-hazzard way even at the present 

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