34 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



Many fruits succeed nobly in this great valley, but our high-grade 

 apples, our great quartet of cherries, and our Willamette Valley Bart- 

 letts are surpassed by the fruits of no clime under the stars of God. 



Ladies and gentlemen of the California State Horticultural Conven- 

 tion, you will have noticed that in the methods of orchard culture I 

 have outlined, I have followed implicitly the best traditions among 

 the handlers of orchards in California. In many respects orchard work 

 in our valley is sui generis and there are no blazed trails to follow. We 

 must fight our own way through the woods. But our best methods are 

 imitations, and, perhaps, poor ones of Californian models. How closely 

 we have followed your work and how well we have profited from that 

 study may best be judged by inspections afield; but you can guess 

 at the result by what I have told you of our operations. For whatever 

 success we have achieved we have the fruit-growers of California, our 

 teachers, to thank. 



You will note here and there in what I have said a disposition to be 

 wary of scientific terms and theorems. I have always noticed that when 

 a layman mixes science with horse talk he soon becomes fuddled. So 

 I am a little chary of the jingle of scientific phrases. But I do not 

 wish to be understood as speaking slightingly at any time of the con- 

 clusions of scientific experts in horticulture. The latest horticultural 

 literature, the latest discussions and deductions of horticultural sci- 

 entists, are ever at our right hands. We pore over them by night and 

 by day. If it were not for these helps from an army of thoroughly 

 unselfish, thoroughly equipped scientific men, we apple-growers would 

 be in the mires of Despond before another morrow. Speak slightingly 

 of these men ! Ah, no ; you shall never hear me do that. I could never 

 hold them lightly. But so many bits of evidence are stumbled upon by 

 the practical observer, the man who fondles his trees in the morning, 

 calls them by name at noon, and gives them a "fare ye well" at night, 

 bits of evidence that seldom, if ever, are presented to the scientist, that 

 we may perhaps be pardoned if we form opinions that at first glance 

 would seem to be heretical. 



The intensity of the labors that go to make up the technique of 

 orchard operations, labors that are imperative if we would even approx- 

 imate our standards, labors that completely absorb the time and atten- 

 tion of the grower, is more than compensated for by the joys of 

 ^association with our trees. Well-cared-for apple trees are, indeed, 

 sociable fellows, always obliging and ready to do us favors for our 

 attentions to them, heartily responsive to each fondling touch, courting 

 the sprites of earth and air to fill their fronds with fruitfulness in com- 

 pensation for our watchful guardianship. Alert companions, indeed, 

 are they to one who understands their language ; to one who rejoices in 

 the fact that the vital essence throbbing within them is the same life 



