FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
19 
to serious ground; or at least to convince 
his audience that the lighter vein has been 
abandoned. I wish to assure you, how¬ 
ever, that the remaining words I have to 
say are strictly and sincerely serious. 
Eighteen years ago the Florida State 
Horticultural Society was organized at 
Ocala. By a coincidence the figures eigh¬ 
teen also represent the number of our 
charter members. Of these just one-half 
have since passed into the Great Beyond. 
Of the remainder some have removed 
from the State, others are incapacitated 
by sickness, and a survey of this audience 
fails to reveal the presence at this meet¬ 
ing of a single conferee who assisted me 
at the birth of this Society. Looked at 
from the standpoint of losses of illustrious 
members, both of those who were with us 
at the beginning and others who joined 
afterwards, retrospection carries with it 
so much of sadness that I hasten to turn 
to the brighter side. That there is a 
brighter side is plainly evinced by the fact 
that notwithstanding our heavy losses by 
death and otherwise our last annual re¬ 
port showed a membership of 519. While 
the majority of these are located in the 
State, yet a review of the addresses shows 
that in addition to Florida, seventeen Stat¬ 
es and nine foreign countries are repre¬ 
sented in our membership, as follows: 
States: Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, 
Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, 
New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South 
Dakota, Texas and Vermont. 
Foreign Countries: Australia, Asia, 
Cuba, Hawaii, Jamaica, Mexico, New 
Zealand, Porto Rico and South Africa. 
Now, Mr. President, it is not my pur¬ 
pose to go into detail of what this So¬ 
ciety has accomplished. Our comprehen¬ 
sive annual repKDrts, published for many 
consecutive years past, contain full re¬ 
cords of our efforts and our accomplish¬ 
ments. But I make the broad assertion 
that no other State Horticultural Society 
in America has done more toward further¬ 
ing the horticultural progress of a State 
and that none other can show such an in¬ 
terest in its work as evinced by a world¬ 
wide membership. I wish also, Mr. Pres¬ 
ident, to call the attention of these gentle¬ 
men, who have so kindly welcomed us. to 
the fact that what we have accomplished 
we have done within ourselves, without 
outside help. The only exception to this 
statement is that a dozen years ago, for 
two years in succession, 1893 and 1894, 
our proceedings were published by the 
State Department of Agriculture, through 
Hon. L. B. Wombwell, Commissioner. 
While many State Societies have looked 
to liberal legislatures to assist them in 
their efforts toward upbuilding the Hor¬ 
ticultural interest of their States, we have 
looked only to our own membership; 
whatever assistance has been necessary 
has, with the exception already cited, 
come from within our ranks. 
Now, Mr. President, I believe this is 
all wrong. The fault may have been with 
ourselves in not having sufficiently appre¬ 
ciated or urged our claims, but I believe 
the time has come when we should ask, 
and should receive, from the Florirla Leg¬ 
islature appropriations which shall in 
some measure relieve the, approximately, 
five hundred members of this Society 
from carrying on at their own expense a 
work that is of so much benefit to evei'y 
one of the more than 500,000 people that 
comprise our population. For, Mr. Pre- 
ident, it is so true as to be axiomatic that 
back of the lasting commercial prosperity 
of a country stands the producer, the one 
who evolves from Mother Earth her fin- 
