President’s Annual Address 
H. Harold Hume 
Mr. Chairman , Members of the Florida 
State Horticultural Society, Ladies 
and Gentlemen : 
Florida! A State of vast woodlands 
and open savannahs, a State of mirrored 
lakes and smoothly flowing rivers, all 
walled in by the restless sea! A State of 
ample rainfall and genial climate! A 
State of oak and bay, of palm and pine! 
A State where nature from her bountiful 
hand scattered far and wide trees and 
shrubs and lowly flowering things, strik¬ 
ing in their beauty, wondrous in their va¬ 
riety, a fair and goodly land. Such was 
this State where the Indian lived and 
roamed its vast expanse of park-like for¬ 
ests, hunted beside its rivers, fished its 
limpid lakes. Then the white man came 
and named it, because he saw it was a 
pleasant place—Florida. 
And the Florida that you and I know is 
much the same Florida. The lakes and 
rivers are the same, and the same sea still 
washes our vast extent of sea coast. Here 
and there the palm adorns our landscape 
as of old, beauteous flowers still grow in 
the waste places. The climate is still 
genial and the rains have not entirely for¬ 
saken us. 
But change is over all! 
Gone are the Indians from our trackless 
forests, gone their gleaming paddles from 
our inland waters, gone are their village 
fires from which the smoke curled 
through the giant oaks that o’ershadowed 
them, gone are the virgin forests through 
whose vastness they wandered, gone is the 
majesty of those vast timberlands whose 
somber greatness made sober the lives of 
their aboriginal inhabitants, gone are all 
these and with them much of Florida’s 
immeasurable natural wealth and primeval 
beauty. 
In their place? The white man’s cities, 
towns and villages. In their place? The 
white man’s groves, farms and gardens. 
In their place endless miles of roads of 
steel and rock. In their place man de¬ 
stroyed and fire consumed open acres 
where once the Indians held sway beneath 
shadowing branches. He has done much, 
has the white man; built much, made great 
material gain, destroyed much and in 
many places left this Florida of ours a less 
lovely place, a less worth-while place, in 
some ways, than in the ancient days. 
Now the first point to which I desire to 
lead up is, that one of these days the re¬ 
forestation of Florida must be under¬ 
taken in earnest. That the replanting of 
forest areas will add greatly to the beauty 
of our State goes without saying, but out 
and beyond that is the fact staring us in 
the face that our supplies of lumber are all 
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