48 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Take Indian cotn and see how man has changed and improved it. 

 "Originally a tropical plant, it has gradually been changed in its char- 

 acter so as to mature its crop in the short seasons of Minnesota, and from 

 a tall grass-like plant producing but little seed, it has been dwarfed and 

 made much more prolific." Even the peach, native to Persia, has been 

 largely improved till it ripens in various climes. Within the memories of 

 some here fruits were few, flowers confined to the hollyhock and a few 

 others, but now, thanks to the labors of your fellow-toilers, man has taken 

 the few plants, fruits and flowers God has made, and has multiplied them 

 almost beyond enumeration. 



I recall my boyhood tramps after the wild strawberry. God made a 

 good berry, it is true. He made man also in his image, and when he said 

 dress and keep the garden, he started man in a direction of development, 

 saying, "beat my berry," and man has done it. God made a few varieties 

 of apples; the first work on pomology records twenty-three varieties. 

 The horticulturist took up the work of making apples and pushed it on- 

 ward till now we have more than 2,000 varieties; and man's experiments 

 going on now in the hybridization may yet, with the Russian apple or 

 some other, give you an apple tree for Minnesota's prairies that will defy 

 Minnesota's arctic frost, blush in blossoms with the kiss of spring, and 

 reward your labor with luscious autumnal fruitage. 



But I need not weary you with multiplied illustrations of the way the 

 horticulturist is working with God, or draw upon our imagination for the 

 future, for from what you have already accomplished in increasing and 

 improving what the Creator made, and from the varied a'nd wise investi- 

 gation and experiments now in full operation, we feel assured still greater 

 victories and honors are to characterize your profession in evolving plant, 

 tree and fruit till "the bounteous Eden, lost of yore, with fruits and 

 flowers we would restore." 



One thought more. The horticulturist is the man who, in nature's 

 garden, works with God, for your calling is one that tends to bring out and 

 develop the divine in men. In your cultivation of plant, flower, berryi 

 tree, you come in close fellowship with nature, and are ever striving to 

 find the true, the beautiful and the good, and that very effort brings out 

 the divine in you. 



Right here I am reminded of the story of the Scotchman and the Eng- 

 lishman who were talking together of their respective countries; the Eng- 

 lishman said: "You eat oats in Scotland, do you? We feed them to our 

 horses in England." The Scotchman, not willing to be beaten, replied: 

 "Yes, and whoever saw such horses as you have in England, or such men 

 as we have in Scotland?" 



The occupation of horticulture is one pre-eminently fitted to produce 

 men made in the image of God, for the horticulturist, says another, 

 "thinks as God thinks, in living forms." We think with words, God 

 thinks in living forms of beauty and usefulness. 



You also think in living forms; you plan to develop a living beauty. 

 Your thought is seen, as for example, when you took the wild crab on the 

 plains of Asia, small and "so sour as to turn the edge from of a knife", — 

 and have given us the wonderful orchards of our eastern and more genial 

 climes. 



