ORGANIZED HORTICULTURE IN THE NORTHWEST. 57 



all of which section has been more or less tributary to our 

 Association, and it has been our purpose to be helpful as far 

 as possible to all this region. 



At the entrance of your Association into this field we 

 welcome you most heartily. . The difficulties which are being- 

 encountered in Minnesota are very similar to those of your 

 section, and you will be stimulated by those very difficulties 

 in prosecuting- with, all the more ardor your beneficent work. 

 It seems probable that your Association, however, starts out 

 under auspices if anything- more favorable than those which 

 greeted the advent of the Minnesota Society. The immediate 

 vicinity of Winnipeg is not, I take it, so much an undeveloped 

 country as was the region about St. Paul and Minneapolis in 

 1866, neither city at that time being much in excess of 5,000 

 population. The purpose and work of horticultural societies 

 in the west, too, are much better understood and more highly 

 appreciated. They draw to themselves naturally an element 

 that represents a very high type of morality and good citizen- 

 ship. We have a right to be proud of the personnel of the 

 horticultural societies. The work they do is an unselfish 

 one, and deals with nature in her most attractive forms, and 

 unless the springs of life are poisoned somewhere at their 

 sources, yield to both the worker and the onlooker only the 

 happiest results. 



The members of the Minnesota Society expect to hear of 

 large fruition in connection with the work of your newly 

 formed Association, and we most heartily bid you God speed. 



Yours fraternally, 



A. W. LATHAM, 



Sec'y Minn. State Hort. Soc'y. 



DISCUSSION. 



MR. WHEI^AMS. It seems to me that we might do the Society a 

 great deal of good by associating with the sister society of Minnesota 

 and gathering experience from them that will benefit us much. The 

 reason I think that we should in some way endeavor to affiliate with 

 them is that the conditions in which their fruit, etc., is grown, are 



