“74 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ent in all men, but like every other accomplishment, a taste for reading 
may be cultivated and acquired, and iwhen a person has decided what 
his ideal employment fora livelihood will be, and becomes thoroughly 
enamored with his work, the more good hooks he reads, understandingly, 
the better qualified he will be for accomplishing whatever is undertaken. 
- Every horticulturist and farmer should have his family library. The 
substantial foundation of every man’s success is in possessing the most 
recently developed information of useful facts relating to his calling. 
Public libraries are excellent as public aids to culture, but can never take 
the place or have the economical helpfulness of the ever-ready, well-se- 
lected family collection of books and papers, giving specific information 
upon facilities, inventions and verified facts, for promoting intelligence 
in their special industry. 
The true basis of usefulness and prosperity to the members of our 
society, is the formation of a horticultural library of recorded accumu- 
lated information that will ever be added strength and intelligence in 
moulding the thoughts, progressive growth and characters of its members 
and their children. It will be the cementing friendship, love and mutual 
‘helpfulness that will bind them together with common interest and be 
the uplifting of all horticultural progress. 
It is truly said, ‘‘Books are to be made useful accessories in the dis- 
charge of life’s duties, amusing companions, partners in the failures and 
triumphs of existence.”’ That mature or immature man or woman has 
lost the best aids and helps of earth’s pilgrimage who has not courted 
their friendship and won a victory over the habit of disinclination to in- 
vestigate the natural and scientific laws of production and sustenance. 
A wise man once said, ‘“‘It is not how much we can read, but what kind 
we read, and how we read, that gives us the greatest beneficial worth, the 
most intellectual development.” The great object should not be how 
many pages can be run over superficially, but read for the purpose of re- 
taining in the memory that which will be of use as helps in our peculiar 
employments. 
The best investment for a farmer or gardener is to take a good agricul- 
tural and horticultural journal. Time wasted in reading New York Ledg- 
ers and yellow covered literature. could be put to more profitable use, if it 
was spent in reading that which would be of value in helping us gain an 
honest, manly living. 
RUSSIAN. 
As yet it isa mooted question in the minds of many horticultural physi- 
ologists, what value will be derived from commingling the foreign fruits 
with our own native varieties, where we have contending elements to bat- 
tle against, as here. Andrew Fuller in his ‘‘Propagation of Plants,” says: 
( Page 132.) 
‘‘We may, among fruits, secure size, color, texture, in fact, all the good 
qualities known to belong to or exist in certain species, and still these will 
be of little value unless the plant itself is adapted to the soil and climate 
where it is to be cultivated. In fact, adaption is all that issought or can 
be credited to what is termed acclimatizing of plants and animals, for it 
is scarcely to be supposed that the constitutional characters of the indi- 
vidual plant or animal can be greatly or permanently affected by a re- 
moval from one climate or condition to another. One variety of plant 
