THE WESTERN NEW YORK HORTICULTURAL 



SOCIETY 



JOHN HALL 



Secretary of the Society, Rochester, X. V. 



The first record we have of the organ- 

 ization of fruit growers in the Empire 

 Slate is that of the Fruit Growers' So- 

 ciety of Western New York, in 1855. It 

 cume upon the scene at a time when the 

 New World was beginning to witness 

 numerous demonstrations of the inventive 

 genius of man. The successful use of 

 illuminating gas in this country had been 

 practiced for less than a quarter of a cen- 

 tury ; travel by steam railroad had not be- 

 come a fact until about the same period; 

 and not until 1844 was the first public 

 telegraph in this country completed. 

 In 1870, the Fruit Growers' Society of Western New York 

 changed its name to " The Western New York Horticultural 

 Society." Six years later Alexander Graham Bell discovered the 

 principle which culminated in the invention of the telephone, and 

 still several years later followed the general commercial introduc- 

 tion and development of electric lighting. 



Agricultural experiment stations and agricultural colleges were 

 not known in the United States until about twenty years after 

 the Western New York Horticultural Society was born. The 

 first experiment station we read of was established at Middle- 

 town, Conn., in 1875, and our own New York Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station became a fact in 1882, seven years before the 

 writer of this article became the secretary-treasurer of the organi- 

 zation of which this article is the subject. 



The history of the old Western New Y r ork Horticultural So- 

 ciety would make intensely interesting reading if published in 

 detail. This, however, it will be impossible to do here. The 

 wonderful progress made in the development of fruit growing in 



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