STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 29 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



W. W. Blanchard^ of Canton. 

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I feel the honor conferred upon me of welcoming you this 

 morning, and as a citizen I recognize the fact that we should 

 be deeply grateful, in addition to the hospitable feeling of wel- 

 come, as we realize what your Society has done, — as we appre- 

 ciate the end toward which your labors are directed. 



It is with pleasure that we look back over the past ; it is with 

 a certain disappointment that we note the fact that the achieve- 

 ments along the peculiar lines have been attended by difficulty. 

 The work of the husbandman has been for many ages con- 

 sidered a laborious, hard, unsatisfactory toil. It has been 

 thought that a person, no matter how illy equipped and insuffi- 

 cient he was for other fields of labor, could as a husbandman, 

 as a tiller of the soil, as a cultivator of fruit, make a success. 

 But the very fact is, as our name teaches us, today those fields 

 of labor have their peculiar sciences and arts. And as we 

 recognize what has been accomplished along these lines today, 

 our hearts swell with appreciation, and we are glad to welcome 

 you in our midst, as we realize that your coming means good 

 to us. It means advancement to us. It means the taking on 

 of new stimulus, the infusion of new energy into our work. 

 It means education as well. Today we have no class of men 

 and women more studious, it seems to me, than the classes 

 represented in these fields of labor that bring us together upon 

 this occasion. It is true that their work is more laborious and 

 the fields are new. When our forefathers came here this land 

 was covered with forests. They were subdued. Those giant 

 monuments of nature have crumbled and passed away, and 

 today we stand, with vigorous bodies, as patrons of husbandry, 

 as cultivators, developers of the science of fruit raising and 

 horticulture, to subdue and contend with forces that have 

 impeded the advance of progress all the time. 



Now today we are glad that you are here. It is certainly a 

 revolution and evolution, a step in advance, as we see the Intel- 



