132 
SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
plants, the small fruits, shade trees, vegetables, and I don’t 
know that I would omit scarcely any member of the vege¬ 
table kingdom, are glad to put on their finest and gayest 
attire of thrifty growth, producing fruit and foliage a greater 
part of the year, if you will only extend to them the 
conditions required. In the majority of cases the only ele¬ 
ment lacking to this condition is water. 
There are homes and farms scattered throughout this pen¬ 
insular from which the owners have struggled to secure a 
profitable income for the past 10, 15 or perhaps 20 years or 
more. These efforts have been in a measure rewarded; but 
I claim that the same or better results could have been ac¬ 
complished in from one-fourth to one-half the time actually 
consumed if properly aided by irrigation. Had these same 
farmers expended the same effort upon one-fourth the amount 
of land, aided by irrigation, they would have had an inde¬ 
pendent bank account and would have lived a great deal 
better than they have been able to do without irrigation. 
Nearly all of the older residents of Florida have had con¬ 
siderable experience in attempting to raise a variety of veg¬ 
etables for home consumption. Many of their attempts were 
complete failures on account of dry weather. With an ir¬ 
rigating plant there are no “off seasons” for fruit and no¬ 
dry spells to encourage insect life, drop the fruit, wither, 
one’s vegetables and courage. 
What, in fact, can be more disheartening than to see one’s 
toil go for naught? To plow and sow, but never reap? 
To plant and fertilize, cultivate and protect, watch and wait 
and wait again for the harve a t so slow in coming, often so mea¬ 
ger when it comes ! Alas! too often the poor man gives up 
beaten, perhaps to try his lot elsewhere under different con¬ 
ditions. But his ambition for a second attempt is rarely equal 
to his first enthusiasm. He is older and the buoyant hope 
has vanished with the vanished years. It is evident that this 
lost hope is a serious evil to the man and the community. 
Progress is the child of courageous enterprise, and enterprise 
rests on hope. So I say the hope should be based on certain¬ 
ties, or at least on strong probabilities. 
When we know that the total rainfall is in the average of 
years insufficient, that it is unevenly distributed geographi¬ 
cally. being sometimes over 60 inches in one part of the state 
and less than 40 in other parts; that it varies greatly with dif¬ 
ferent years, and that in the same year it may be excessive for 
for a brief time, and almost, if not quite, totally lacking for 
months together at other times; when all this is borne in upon 
the consciousness of the cultivator, by years of struggle with., 
