TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
11 
PHILADELPHIA’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF AMERI- 
CAN POMOLOGY. 
PROF. THOMAS MEEHAN, GERMANTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA. 
Prof. Meehan, responding to the call of the Chair, for remarks on this 
subject, came forward. He was cordially greeted by the Society and said: 
Mr. President and Friends— American pomology is the admiration of the 
world; and I desire to say that, in my opinion, the great eminence to which it 
has attained is mainly the work of the Americal Pomological Society of which 
you are members. When foreigners come to America they are surprised at 
the immense profusion of fruit everywhere; they find that even the poorest 
can enjoy the best fruits equally with the rich. In the old world it is differ- 
ent; it is only what is known there as “the middle class” or “the better class” 
that is able to enjoy fruits at all; the vast majority of the people, the masses, 
scarcely know what good fruits are except as they raise them in the cottage 
gardens which many of them have. They raise fruits there to a large extent 
as we do, but those who raise them seldom get the fruits themselves. What 
they raise others eat; what they produce has to go chiefly in the shape of 
tithes and taxes. It is only in America, where we are comparatively free 
from these exactions, that we are enabled to spread over the whole country 
the successful fruit growing which you see today. 
As I have said, you and your Society are entitled to the credit for this. 
Y r ou know all that, but I have a purpose in reminding you of it. We have been 
going on for the past fifty years, since the origin of this Society, with new 
ideas, new practices and new methods, until we have reached the eminence 
of which I have spoken; but it is well, I think, in the case of all progressive 
bodies, to pause sometimes to take a little breath and, while pausing, to 
review in a measure what has been done. When we feel that the work which 
we have been trying to do has been successfully accomplished the feeling 
leads us to make greater progress. It was with this thought that it occurred 
to me that, while you are resting, it would be well to call your attention to 
what Philadelphia has done in connection with this great work— not that 
Philadelphia has done more than other localities, but because you are here 
and, as pomologists, naturally would like to know what Philadelphia has 
done in that line, just as you like to know, when you go to other cities, what 
has been done there. 
A thought that occurs to me here may be worth mentioning, and that is that 
the efforts of the mass of humanity to attain certain objects often produce 
results in a direction which they little think of while they are pursuing their 
projects. Who would have thought that the rush for gold, in California, a 
half a century ago, would have resulted in making California one of the 
brightest. States of the Union for fruit growing? In like manner, who would 
have thought that the silver mining enterprise in Colorado would have built 
up a community there which is already making its agriculture and horticul- 
ture scarcely second to its mining interests in value. 
So it has been in the past. The desire to get land for vineyards, all over 
the world, has done as much probably to help us along in the cause of human- 
ity and progress as the rush for gold did in the western . States. It was 
mainly the desire to have vineyards that led to the selection of Philadelphia 
as a site for the location of a town. I may say that, in the olden times, 
