National and Educational Interests. 



149 



collected. The greater number of these societies are of com- 

 paratively recent origin. In 1852, A. J. Downing wrote as 

 follows in his preface to Lindley's "Theory of Horticulture": 

 "Within the last ten years the taste for horticultural pursuits 

 has astonishingly increased in the United States. There are, 

 at the present moment, at least 12 societies in different parts 

 of the Union devoted to the improvement of gardening, and 

 to the dissemination of information on the subject." All the f^dedu- 

 stronger societies receive instruction from experts in various cation - 

 departments of horticulture, and as nearly all of them publish 

 reports of their proceedings, they create a large and invalu- 

 able portion of the permanent literature of horticulture. The 

 transactions of these societies never have been appreciated as 

 their merits deserve, for while very many of them lack the 

 supervision of a skillful editor, they are all valuable as store- 

 houses of personal experience. 



The society may now be considered to be an indispensable 

 adjunct to any progress in horticulture, a proposition which 

 finds confirmation in the fact that the extent of enthusiasm 

 in any meeting is usually in direct ratio to the value of the 

 horticultural interests in the community. Writing upon this 

 point, Charles A. Green makes the following remarks :* 



"Considering all the aspects of the case, any person who can look back 

 upon the history of fruit-growing will concede that remarkable changes have 

 taken place, and that every year we have been making wonderful progress. 

 Nowhere can this fact be so clearly seen as at our horticultural meetings. A 

 list of subjects that would have been acceptable ten years ago at such meetings 

 would now be considered unworthy of discussion or attention. Men who 

 were competent to instruct the members of a horticultural society ten years 

 ago would not now consider themselves competent. It has come to be un- 

 derstood that any one profitably to occupy the time of a horticultural associa- 

 tion should be an expert in some certain specialty, and in most cases a 

 scientific man, who has devoted his entire life to the study of one department 

 of affairs relating to practical pomology." 



The aims and results of a horticultural society have never 

 been more pleasantly told than by Charles W. Garfield in his Aims of t 

 annual address for 1891 as president of the Grand River Society. 

 Valley (Michigan) Horticultural Society : 



"Our society was organized in 1872, since which time monthly meetings 

 have been held with creditable regularity. There have been ebbs and flows 

 in the interest and enthusiasm manifested, but to-day the organization is 



*Green's Fruit Grower, Jan. 1892. 



