STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 95 
for festivals or wreaths for graves. When winter places his icy band a the 
earth, and welds it with 74 degrees of cold; it seems as though our horticultural 
hopes were congealed; and our pets of flowers, shrubs and trees had burst their 
cellular hearts witn cold anguish at being left to cope with the Manitoba waves. 
But spring time is ‘‘the resurrection and the life’’ of inanimate nature, and as 
the sun warms the earth, it is as prolific of green as the sunniest clime in the 
world and to stand in Minnesota in the latter part of the leafy month of June, or 
go forth in her wild fields and view nature’s magnificent, uncultivated flora, you 
could not think that frost had ever fettered the land or chilled the soil. 
Some of our fruits suffered and a few of our ornamental trees and shrubs gave 
up and failed to waken with the summer sun. The intense cold, instead of dis- 
couraging the sturdy horticulturists of Minnesota, has seemed to nerve them 
for what seems to be the perpetual fight against the elements. 
Good must come out of this rough experience and the time will come when an 
ironclad list will defy the cold, and our people, in an abundance of fruit, will 
not forget the pioneer members of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. 
No society in America, with like objects in view, can present in their published 
transactions so valuable experience as ours. Nurserymen and amateurs, east 
and north, eagerly send for our published transactions as a guide in making 
their lists tor the western market. In the matter of frost-resisting plants and 
trees we are the law of the whole land. 
Pertaining to foreign correspondence, I have nothing to present worthy of 
note. The change in the address of the secretary has probably accounted for 
this, I have recently arranged a complete exchange list with all kindred socie- 
ties in this country and Canada, and at our next meeting a more complete record 
of this important part of a secretary's report can be made. 
There have been no meetings of the executive committee during the year, but 
their work is apparent in our programme through their written advice. 
The Minnesota State society has now in its possession a valuable library. Of 
the bound and paper cover transactions, running back through a series ot years, 
there are perhaps 3000 copies. These are constantly being called for to fill a niche 
in the shelf room of every public library and scientific institution in the land. As 
these libraries and institutions multiply, they will yet be wanted, and they will 
be in demand a hundred years hence. They are the archives of a noble indus- 
try, and should they be destroyed they could not be replaced. In addition to 
these, we have the exchange numbers of reports of kindred societies throughout 
this country and Canada, for a series of years. We have photographs of emi- 
nent Horticulturists, and lithographs and photographs of fine fruits. We have 
our centennial medallion, our certificate of exhibit that we may proudly call 
our diploma; all these things are of great value to us and to the State. Where 
are they? After a good deal of effort 1 found them in the basement cellar of 
the university strongly nailed up in rough boxes. They are now in St. Paul 
stored as safely as I can store them, but still in the boxes, inaccessable, doing 
nobody any good, because of their inaccessibility. We are doing all the work 
of collecting this horticultural data for nothing, and boarding ourselves, and 
some of us are paying for the privilege. When this association sent 119 varie- 
ties of apples to the Philadelphia exposition, it did as much to advertise the re- 
sources of our State, as much to attract immigration, as the whole moral influence 
ofthe State immigration bureau. When under the auspicies of this society at our 
annual State exposition, we lay out a show of fruits, flowers and vegetables that no 
