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HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



back to it as one of the brightest experiences of my life, if I never have the 

 pleasure of repeating it, as I hope on some future occasion to do. And I 

 would like to say further that I think that it is very fitting indeed that the 

 initiative has been taken by that nation of which it has been said it holds the 

 highest hopes of humanity. 



G. NICHOLSON: May I trespass upon your time just for a moment? T 

 should like to express my gratification and the pleasure I have taken here 

 to-day. The establishment of which this forms the center is an establish- 

 ment worthy of a great city and a great country. Such an establishment 

 as that did not exist when I was in" America before, and I am surprised at 

 the developments of a few years, in the developments of which any nation 

 might well be proud. I was here in the States about nine years ago, and 

 the number of people and the hustle of every one impressed me very much 

 then. I believe it is still more pronounced now. An old friend of mine once 

 paradoxically said that horticulture must be intimately related through the 

 blood of plants and through botany, purifying and improving it, with good- 

 ness, and a man could not help being better. Judging from my experience, 

 the importance of the horticultural society cannot be overestimated. I shall 

 always remember this conference with the greatest of pleasure. 



W. M. HAYS : I wish to say a few words representing in a way one class 

 of the people at least who are working along this line of the improvement 

 of our plants and our animals in a somewhat organized way, in our great 

 system of agricultural colleges and experiment stations, including that great- 

 est one at Washington. I am only one of two or three who were in the con- 

 ference three years ago in London. There has been great progress since that 

 time, and the substance and subject matter of this meeting is a substantial 

 evidence, a most remarkable evidence, of the progress that is being made in a 

 number of ways, and especially of progress in the interest taken in this sub- 

 ject, both from the practical standpoint and from the theoretical. 



We have come to believe that the theory of plant and animal improvement 

 along scientific lines can be worked out, not only for the past, nature's way 

 of working it out, but for the future; and the people have come to believe as 

 never before that this great question can be approached in a large way and 

 much done for the good of humanity. Some of us after the meeting at Lon- 

 don thought of organizing along these lines more carefully, and a great deal 

 of that organization has already taken place. The Department of Agriculture 

 at Washington has in hand, and already established, certain features of organi- 

 zation bringing about co-operation between the experiment stations and also 

 the government with groups of individual experimenters. 



Secretary Wilson has a thorough appreciation of this whole matter, and 

 has done a great work in getting it in form where it is going to bring about 

 great financial results for this country. No doubt there will be meetings of 

 this kind of an international character again. When we were at the banquet 

 in the Horticultural Club in London, a meeting similar to this, I remember, 

 it was suggested that we might some time meet in Paris, and Mr. H. de Vil- 

 morin, who is since dead, was in hopes that he might be instrumental in bring- 

 ing about such a meeting. We were so delightfully entertained in London that 



