FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
every fruit grown in this country. We 
may envy others, but they, too, have their 
troubles. But we are taking a renewed 
interest in frost protection methods. 
Crude oil, in pots of various designs, is 
being effectively used. Our weather bu¬ 
reau is at our service, and forewarned is 
forearmed. Here, too, there is a way out. 
We have difficulties to overcome, it is 
true, but never before have there been so 
many agents at work to help the fruit 
grower in mastering his problems. Never 
before have these agents applied them¬ 
selves more diligently or more effectively 
than now. Our own experiment station 
is better housed, better equipped, better 
manned and more effective in its opera¬ 
tions than ever before. The Agricultu¬ 
ral Department at Washington has, 
through its various activities in this State 
in the last few years, greatly assisted us 
in our labors. We know so much more 
of the nature of our problems and how to 
solve them that I sometimes wonder 
whether we always do as well as we 
know. We are constantly searching for 
more knowledge and in our eagerness to 
gain more, we fail to apply what we al¬ 
2 > 
ready have. The application of knowl¬ 
edge already at our disposal would go a 
long way toward ameliorating conditions 
of which we are apt to complain. 
We know the past, we have a working 
knowledge of the present, but it is well 
that the future, with all its difficulties, is 
held from us. We should hesitate, falter 
and fail, if looking into the dim future 
we might be given to see the troubles 
which will doubtless arise in our chosen 
field. But we are assured of this, a nat¬ 
ural part of the development of the hu¬ 
man race, that “as our days are, so shall 
our strength be,” strength of brawn 
and brain, strength of science in 
resistless operation, strength of deep 
and knowing insight into the prin¬ 
ciples and forces which govern the 
behavior of our plants in their manifold 
and complex environment of sun and 
wind, water and soil. All sound knowl¬ 
edge is strength, ignorance is weakness, 
and in the surmounting of our difficulties 
our ignorance is giving away to knowl¬ 
edge, our weakness is being turned into 
strength. 
