FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 83 



guitlcd public sentiment.' Those are two views on the sub- 

 ject. A few years aj^o it was my g-ood pleasure to drive a 

 g-ood bit across the state of Connecticut with a friend from 

 the west, who had never been in the east before, and at almost 

 every turn in the road he was exclaiming about the beauty of 

 the landscape, the magnificence and the glory of our native 

 trees. He said to me : 'Do you know this Connecticut is 

 one vast park, and if we had it in the west we would use it 

 for advertising purposes to bring in tens of thousands of new 

 settlers? It is a gold mine and we wish we had something- 

 like it in the west.' A year or two afterwards a farmer in 

 the section of the country where we traveled through, had in 

 front of his farm an eighth of a mile row of magnificent 

 maples, and he sold his farm, and the jiew owner found that 

 inside of his border line potatoes and corn did not grow as 

 well where those maple trees were, and the whole row was 

 cut down, and an outraged public sentiment demanded the 

 prevention of such crime in future, and the passage of the 

 Connecticut tree warden law is the monument to the magnifi- 

 cent row of murdered maples. We are here to-night to take 

 up this question of the preservation of our trees, and main- 

 taining and enlarging* the beauty of Connecticut. We prac- 

 tical fruit growers of the Pomological Society realize that 

 the more beautiful Connecticut can become, the more enjoy- 

 able it will be for our own homes and for those we love ; but 

 it also will be a great attraction to others to establish and 

 maintain homes with us, and those others are people who are 

 appreciative of many beautiful things, and will buy most 

 liberally of our fine fruits. We stand here for a more beau- 

 tiful Connecticut for the niany as ag-ainst more bushels of 

 corn and potatoes for the few. It is now my pleasure to 

 introduce as the first speaker Mr. James Draper of the 

 Worcester, Mass., park commission, who will take up the 

 general subject of shade trees." 



