8 
AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
Besides this, there has happened a yet more wonderful and fortunate 
thing among ourselves. Heretofore there has always rested a shadow over 
the pride of our American citizenship. There was “a rift in the lute” and the 
tones sometimes failed to come true and clear. For four years, many 
of us stood with breasts bared to shot and shell and saber stroke of each 
other. That horrible dream finally came to an end and we met as brothers 
again, yet the shade of the shadow had not fully past. But since we last 
looked into each others eyes, the “rift in the lute” has been cemented in the 
blood of our soldier sons, who have stood shoulder to shoulder against a 
common enemy. They have risked their lives for each other. They have 
drunk from the same canteen. They have cheered each other in the hour of 
victory. They have nursed each other in wounds and sickness and have 
sorrowed together for their dead. They are now, and will be as long as life 
lasts, bound together by that tie which binds closer than any other — the tie 
of comradeship. It cannot fail that the fathers of those sons will meet and 
will part with a different hand clasp and a different look into the eyes. 
Thank God, the “rift in our lute” is gone, no more to- mar our harmony for- 
ever! (Applause.) 
The past is finished. United we look into the future to take council 
together. No other pomological organization ever had such boundless oppor- 
tunities for usefulness. Heretofore, a new fruit was expected to come from 
without. Men have been justly honored when they brought new and useful 
fruits and plants from far countries, but the time now is that a far more 
promising field is open in the creating of new fruits from those ready to our 
hands in the different botanical regions of our own country. The beginning 
of this work, in dividing our country into districts according to scientific 
biological surveys, instead of according to accidental political divisions, is 
accomplished. The men represented by this Society, that is, the Pomologists 
of America, are now in position to work in the closest accord with the men 
of the national experiment stations. They ought to help lay out the lines 
of work for these stations. They should furnish the working material for 
experimentation; and finally, this Society must sit as a supreme court of 
last resort and pass upon the worthiness of the results. 
There are doubtless native fruits in each one of the life regions into which 
our country is divided, which only await intelligent labor to civilize them 
into good citizenship and to the production of pomological products, best 
fitted for those regions. 
The work of wine growfing has been brought to such development in foreign 
countries, that the vintages of certain districts have a reputation over the 
world, and even the wines of certain hillsides. Some day may it not be that 
in this nation, each life region shall have fruits bred for, and especially 
suited to itself? 
This may be called a dream, but why a dream? The improved breeds of 
domestic animals have had their origin and development in certain regions, to 
meet the wants of those regions, while in the realm of fruits, chance has 
had the center of the stage of action and still holds it, and scientific pomology 
stands in the entrance, looking on. Yet the vital laws of reproduction of 
animals and of plants are identical and offer no reason why the next fifty 
years should not see fruit breeding carried on as systematically as stock 
breeding now is. 
For instance, in the upper Mississippi valley, many hybrids already exist 
