STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 421 



"The memory of most of us easily runs back to the time when few 

 or no cultivated strawberries were to be found anywhere in the land, 

 and now your reports easily enumerate, I suppose, 400 or 500 varieties. 

 Substantially the same statement can be made concerning the grape. 

 Similar if not equal progress has been made with other fruits. I sup- 

 pose the value of the fruit crop of the United States in a good year 

 must approach $100,000,000. And the increase in the quantity has 

 hardly been more remarkable than the improvement in quality." 



After this address the committee on credentials reported the list 

 of delegates present, the number being unusually large, including 

 most of the leading pomologists of America. 



Next came the usual discussion as to where the next meeting should 

 be held. J. B. Moore, of Massachusetts, offered Boston, in behalf of 

 the Massachusetts horticultural society. He urged that the place be 

 accepted in order that, if his life be spared, the venerable president 

 might be in attendance. It was so decided. 



The following officers were then elected for the next two years : 

 President, Marshall P. Wilder, of Boston; First Vice-President, Pat- 

 rick Barry, of Rochester, N. Y. ; Treasurer, Benjamin G. Smith, of 

 Cambridge, Mass. ; Secretary, Chas. W. Garfield, of Grand Rapids, 

 Mich. At this point a telegram was ordered sent to President Wilder, 

 notifying him of his re-election as President of the society, to which 

 he replied as follows: "All right; go ahead. I accept the presidency. 

 God bless the old Pomological." 



The next business of importance was the reading of the address of 

 President Wilder, by ex-Secretary Beal. In it he says: It is thirty- 

 seven years since the society was organized. His resignations as Presi- 

 dent has always been declined, and a special officer having been 

 selected in his place when absent, he regarded such action as a testi- 

 monial of regard for past deeds rather than for anything he could now 

 do. He alludes at length, and very fittingly, to the society's mission, to 

 what it set out to do, and what it has so well accomplished. He alludes 

 tenderly and afi'ectionately to the death of Charles Downing, according 

 him a high place in history. In the list of the society's accomplish- 

 ments, he enumerates a higher standard of excellence in judging, educa- 

 tion of taste, discouraging cultivation of inferior sorts, more than 600 

 varieties having been discarded; a uniform system of rules for judg- 

 ing; reform in nomenclature and many other things. He again urges 

 "a sy tern of nomenclature pure and plain in its diction, pertinent and 

 proper in its application," and asks the nurserymen to aid in this 

 reform by revising their catalogues. Speaking of improvements by 



