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Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the State 
Horticultural Society. 
PRESIDENT’S ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
J. M. UNDERWOOD, LAKE CITY. 
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Minn. State Horticultural Society: 
It is with great satisfaction that I appear before you this evening 
on the twenty-eighth annual meeting of our society. 
We have had the pleasure of entertaining you in Lake City at one 
of our summer meetings, when the beauties of flowers and fruits 
enhanced the occasion, but the time was too short for you to come 
into intimate relation with our homes and to know us at our best. 
Now, while the winter is not so propitious a time to become 
acquainted with our romantic location on the shores of this beauti- 
ful lake, and the horticultural interests of our city and the surround- 
ing country are not so inviting as they would be in the summer, 
we hope that our firesides will compensate by their warmth for any 
lack on the part of nature. 
During the year 1894, it is probable that the horticulturist had 
heaped upon him every experience of an objectionable nature that 
he had heretofore escaped or would ever be called upon to pass 
through. This experience was by no means confined to Minnesota; 
but frosts, storms, drought, bugs, worms and blight seemed to hold 
high carnival without regard to location. Notwithstanding, fruit 
has been plenty and some of it cheap. With grapes at sixteen cents for 
an eight pound basket, surely every one should have had all they 
could eat; and yet there were millions of our inhabitants who prob- 
ably did not eat a bunch of grapes last year. 
At our last annual meeting we touched upon the importance of 
adopting irrigation in the growing of fruits and vegetables. The 
drought of last summer emphasized still more the advisability of 
the intelligent application of this resource. Its discussion is made a 
feature of our program, and I hope much valuable information 
may be brought out regarding it. There is no provision in the 
statutes of our state for acquiring “water rights” for irrigation pur- 
poses, but an act of the legislature should be passed during this 
winter’s session to cover this case. 
