STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 31T 



It used to be said of the Maine Yankees, that if two of them 

 were to be placed on a bare rock and obliged to go into business 

 with no capital but the brains in their heads and the clothes on 

 their backs, they would get rich off of each other by swapping 

 jackets; and sir, if you were to put a Yankee upon an iceberg, or place 

 a Quaker there, or a civilized foreigner from any country we know of, 

 it is perfectly safe to say that he would find out how to raise fruit 

 and grow trees and flowers there, or he would leave the place. 

 There can be no permanency to the home of civilized man — in fact 

 his abiding place is not a home, without these things, because there 

 is no contentment there. The place where they cannot be grown, 

 is a place where men are always on the watch to sell out, where 

 everything is done for to-day, where the fathers, as they stay, de- 

 scend in the scale of being, where the mothers are always weary^ 

 where the boys leave the farm, and where the girls ought to leave. 

 Fully realizing the importance of this fact to the permanent devel- 

 opment of the new northwest and the happiness of its people, the 

 horticultural societies of the states, territories and provinces out 

 there, have resolutely set themselves to work to overcome the dif- 

 ficulties in the way. To some extent they have succeeded, as an 

 examination and a critical study of the fruits we exhibit here, in 

 this off year of fruits, even with us, will show; and in the opinion 

 of those best qualified to judge, we shall at no very distant day 

 overcome them all, so far at least as to place a very large portion of 

 the wheat growing lands of the northwest on an equality with any 

 of the states in the Union, in the production of the apple, and in 

 reference to forestry — for as pomologists and horticulturists we 

 must never forget that — so far as to cover the prairies and plains- 

 in belts, with timber, without which a country as cold as that can 

 never be said to be fairly inhabitable. Mr. President, these are 

 sanguine words in regard to our fruit prospects in the new north- 

 west, but I believe them to be true. You have seen our northwest- 

 ern grown Duchess of Oldenberg on your tables here; our Wealthy 

 apple, too, our beautiful hybrid crabs that taste like apples, and 

 our lovely grapes. Can you excel them — any of them, in out door 

 culture here in the east or down sojth for that matter? 



And as we have delved in old records, and ransacked the world 

 to find out where this blood in our few successful sorts of apples- 

 came from and why they do so well with us, where hundreds of 

 eastern sorts have failed under similar trials, our minds have opened 

 and taken in the fact, that it is not so much a question of cli- 

 mate and soil as one of adaptation. It now seems to us as we trace^ 



