ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
Delivered in the Assembly Chamber, February 13th. 
BY J. G. KNAPP, ESQ., OF MADISON. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen: 
I shall confine myself to the proper soil in which trees can 
be successfully grown. In doing this, I shall purposely drop all 
technical, and, to many people, unintelligible names, and so speak 
as to be understood, if possible, by the masses of men. 
Your object is to supply the people of the State not only 
with the means to beautify and adorn their homes, but also to 
render those homes as w r ell attractive and healthy, as to supply 
the resources of nutriment, and the innocent gratification of the 
appetite; than to which nothing is more conducive than the 
cultivation of fruits and flowers. I at least do not imagine a 
more benign object. Tell me not of the fame of the warrior, 
or the petty success of the politician. Who now remembers the 
names of the officers, much less of the men, who fell at the 
battles in the war of 1812? But the orchard planted by the 
fathers of those men lives green in the memories of the young 
men and maidens, when year after year they gather the luscious 
fruit from the boughs, or saunter beneath their shade in the cool 
of a summer’s day, and whisper in all attentive ears, words 
which, none others may witness. So the names of the compro¬ 
misers of 1820 are forgotten, and so will be forgotten the 
compromisers of 1861; but he who plants an orchard in 1861 
will leave a monument behind which shall last at least a century 
after he is dead, and make his name as familiar even to the 
