178 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
natural products of the earth. I think 
that to the horticultural products, rather 
than to other kinds of produce, we owe a 
peculiar kind of richness in our national 
experience. These products are of infi¬ 
nite variety and they are good to handle 
and to look upon. We may derive a dis¬ 
tinct educational value from the kind and 
variety of the produce that we handle as 
a people. As an American, I am thankful 
that Florida has allowed us access to the 
tropics. This access broadens our experi¬ 
ence, and it is more worth while to live 
in New York because Florida is a part of 
the Union. The tropical and sub-tropical 
productions that Florida has contributed 
to our experience is much in my mind at 
present, because I am engaged in the com¬ 
pilation of a thesaurus of cultivated plants 
and- many species would not be included 
were it not for Florida. 
If we can picture to ourselves the Union 
without Florida, we can readily under¬ 
stand how our experience and our national 
vision would have been restricted. Flor¬ 
ida was not one of the thirteen original 
States. It has little history of the Revo¬ 
lutionary Period, as we ordinarily con¬ 
ceive of that history. If the land had not 
been purchased from Spain and this pen¬ 
insula had been a foreign country, we can 
imagine the barriers that would have been 
put up between us and the tropics, and 
how much less close would have been our 
commercial and sentimental connection 
with them. 
II. THE STATE POLITY 
The great horticultural questions are 
not personal and private problems alone. 
The State has its own entity and its own 
life, made up of the combined interests of 
the inhabitants. It acts as a unit on the 
great questions that affect all the people. 
Individuals now begin to approach their 
personal problems with due regard to their 
effect on the public welfare; ( and the peo¬ 
ple are acting together on questions that 
need community action rather than that 
each person shall try to answer his own 
questions solely for himself. One of the 
marked characteristics of the time is the 
development of what we know as the so¬ 
cial feeling. 
No longer is it allowable for any per¬ 
son to harbor a disease or a pest about 
his premises, either in his cattle or in his 
crops, that may become a damage or a 
menace to his neighbors. There is public 
interest in any disease or difficulty that 
may be transferred in any way from one 
person or one property to another. So 
completely does society recognize this 
principle that many of the pests and dis¬ 
eases are specially controlled by law. 
The quarantine for human diseases is 
of long standing and its justice is well 
recognized. We now require quarantine 
not only to guard the health of human be¬ 
ings but also to stay diseases of animals, 
the incursions and distribution of insects 
and fungous diseases and various pests, 
and to control the purity of streams and 
of bodies of water. We even begin to 
regulate advertising signs along the high¬ 
ways. In the peach-growing regions, it 
is now recognized as proper for the State 
to control the spread of peach yellows. 
Similar legislation is so well understood 
as to be practically beyond dispute. 
We now have Federal crop-and-pest 
control. States also have laws for the 
