fail to establish such stations as soon as possible in all newly acquired territory." A policy which long experience in many nations has found to be wise, is surely worthy of the consideration of our several State govern ments. FRUIT PACKAGES AND MARKETING. The growing commercial importance of a horticulture which is having so rapid an evolution, is constantly bringing up new questions for settlement. Perhaps as much fruit is now grown for shipment to distant markets as is sold or used in the immediate neighborhood of its growth. The extension of our gigantic railway system has revolutionized the commercial features of American horticulture in all its branches. We not only now want strawberries and peaches that are good in quality and beautiful in appearance, but which will endure a thousand miles of railway transportation, and still look well, and taste well. This matter of distant shipment involves the questions of packages and packing of all kinds of fruits and vegetables. As this matter will be fully presented by one of our most experienced fruit growers and gardeners, I will here only suggest that a proper thing for this Society to do is to adopt certain standard measures for packages for each kind of fruit. It has been often recommended that our legislatures should provide for the selling of all fruits and vegetables by weight instead of by measure. This is now done in California. But the practical result does not seem to differ much from our own method. It is mostly a matter of terms. In California a box of a certain size is called a fifty-pound box. Here a box of given dimensions is called a third-bushel, a half-bushel, or a bushel box, as the case may be. There is no weighing in the one case, or measuring in the other. But we need uniformity in our packages. When a friend speaks to you of a basket of peaches, what idea of quantity does the expression carry to your mind? TARIFF ON HORTICULTURAL PRODUCTS. Speaking of the commercial aspects of our business, reminds me to call your attention to the subject of the existing tariff on fruits and other horticultural products. There seems to be no good reason why our government should tax the importation of horticultural products, possibly excepting fruits of a semi-tropical character. The tariff averages about 10 per cent. ad valorem. The government does not need the small income which it brings, as it is seeking ways of reducing the annual revenue. If the tax was imposed with the idea of "protecting" the horticulturists of these States against the competition of producers in the British provinces, then it is not called for, and, in fact, gives us no protection. The planters of orchards and gardens have acted always with entire indifference to the effect of this tariff, if not indeed in total ignorance of its existence. It is safe to say that not one tree or plant, more or less, has been planted in these United States on account of the "protection" given by this tariff; that not one day's work, more or less, has been done or one dime been added to or subtracted from any day's wages on account of this tariff. This is certainly a case of "protection which does not protect." But the tariff embarrasses trade. Many hinderances and losses occur on account of it, and the amount of the tax paid to the government is simply added to the cost of the article and is finally paid by the consumer. There is another way in which it affects us as producers unfavorably. The imposition of this tax by our government has induced the Canadian government to impose a similar one about twice as large upon all horticultural products imported from the United States. It is said that these duties would not be maintained long after they were repealed on our side. We export far more fruit to the Canadas than we import from them. And yet the duty against us gives the Canadian producer no protection, for the moment when his crops are ready for the market, our exportation ceases, according to the natural laws of trade. But the producers of the entire country find this tariff troublesome and burdensome. At the last meeting of this Society, in Chicago, in September last, I brought this subject to the attention of members, and resolutions favoring the repeal of our tariff on all horticultural products of Canadian growth were unanimously passed, and a committee was appointed to go before the Tariff Commission, then in session in the city, and present the case to them. This was done. Your committee seemed to carry the conviction of the gentlemen of the commission, and I observe that their report to Congress placed all fruits on the free list, excepting certain kinds of a semi-tropical character. This matter will, in time, come before Congress for action, and I trust that every member of this Society will use his influence to have the report of the Tariff Commission in this particular sustained. BUREAU OF HORTICULTURAL STATISTICS. The system of trade in orchard and garden products, which is rapidly growing, with the expansion of our railway interests, has already assumed great proportions. Every day in the year the tides of horticultural commerce are ebbing or flowing over the great area of our country. Car loads and train loads of our various produce begin to move northward every year with the opening spring, over our leading lines of railway, and this continues with the advancing season until the time arrives for the great current to set the other way. Hundreds of thousands of our people are directly engaged in producing or in the distribution of the great harvests of horticulture. And yet no man concerned in this vast production and traffic is guided in his operations by any such carefully compiled knowledge of the changing facts he is dealing with, as the merchant in cotton or the manufacturer of iron would consider of prime importance to an enlightened management. We have no system of collecting the statistics of our business, such as other industries employ. Are they not equally important? We should know the amount of annual planting of berries and vegetables, and the acreage of orchard and vineyard, and the condition and promise of all of these crops, throughout our entire valley not only, but throughout the whole country. Without this knowledge we constantly work in the dark. Every producer who has sought to plant with some reference to the probable demands of his available markets, and every merchant who has tried to follow intelligently the natural laws of trade in his season's transactions, has certainly felt a great want of knowledge of a wide circuit of facts upon which his success or failure must depend. In what way shall we mend this matter? We must in some way have a bureau of horticultural statistics. If we have no machinery ready made for accomplishing this result, then let us invent some. I venture the suggestion, that if there is no more effective way, that this Society can itself organize such a bureau with sufficient completeness to give us great relief from our ignorance. If our secretary could have a salary sufficient to enable him to employ one or more assistants, he could, I think, make a beginning, at least, of this work, which would demonstrate its great value. EXHIBITIONS. The question of an annual exhibition of fruits, flowers and garden products, by our Society, is one that some of you have given much thought to. You are aware that we held such an exhibition in St. Louis, in September, 1880, at the time of our organization, which was more attractive and complete, I can say with confidence, than any other similar exhibition ever made on this continent. This magnificent collection was gotten together and managed by a provisional committee, to fitly inaugurate the birth of an organization destined to wield a powerful influence, as we then hoped, and do now hope and feel assured, in molding the industries and the finer culture of human society in the heart of this continent for generations to come. But our experience has justified the belief that no great horticultural exhibition can be made to pay its own way, independently and alone. Such an exhibition as we should make, if we attempt any at all,. must cost several thousand dollars. To secure this money, and to secure a sufficient popular attendance to make such a show largely useful, we must, for the present at least, arrange to work in connection with some powerful exposition of other industries. It is for you to decide whether it is desirable to attempt such an exhibition the present year, and also to determine. whether in your judg ment annual or occasional exhibitions should be considered a portion of the legitimate work of this Society. Of the great educational value of horticultural, as well as of other fairs, there can be no doubt. Of their special value to the professional horticulturist, you are all assured. I commend this subject to your thoughtful consideration. GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. Allow me, in conclusion, to call your attention to two or three considerations of a general nature. I desire to have it impressed upon every mind that horticulture is one of the most important agencies for the enhancement of human welfare. Each branch of this profession is useful, dignified and ennobling. It is altogether worthy of the devotion of the best men of the world. It offers a field for the finest powers of the best endowed of mankind. Its problems are sufficient for the best cultivated intellect; its arts will oc cupy the most cunning mind. We should seek to engage the noblest men and women in its interests. A great need of the times is to make rural life so attractive, and to make pecuniary profit in it so possible, as to hold our boys and young men on the farm and in the garden. Very mistaken ideas of gentility, of ease of life, of opportunities for culture, or for winning fame, draw a large percentage of our brightest boys into the so-called learned professions, into teaching, or into trade. With proper surroundings of the home, with a proper education at school, with a proper administration of the economies of the farm, with a sufficient understanding of the opportunities for a high order of intellectual and social accomplishment in the rural life of this country, this need not, and would not, be so. A bright, high spirited boy is not afraid of labor, but he despises drudgery. He will work hard to accomplish a fine end, when the mind and heart both work together with the muscles; but he will escape from dull, plodding toil. Let our boys learn that rural labor is drudgery only when the mind is dull; that the spade and plow and pruning knife are the apparatus with which he manipulates the wonderful forces of the earth and the sky, and the boy will begin to rank himself with the professor in the laboratory or the master at the easel. There is, indeed, occasion that we should, many of us, feel more deeply the glory of our art; that there is no occupation in life that leads the educated man to more fruitful fields of contemplation and inquiry. The scientific mind finds every day in our orchards and fields new material to work upon, and the cultivated taste endless opportunities for its exercise. While I desire to see a taste for horticulture become universal in town and hamlet, and country, and believe that every cottage and every palace in the land should have its flower garden and fruit garden, in the window or out of the window, and something of the shelter and ornamentation of trees, yet I would not encourage either amateur or commercial horticulturist to plant one vine, flower or tree more than he expects to take some intelligent care of. There has been too much planting in ignorance and reaping in disgust. Especially should the planter, on a commercial scale, have a better knowledge of the environment of his business. We all need to know more clearly the conditions of great successes, and to understand what difficulties and hinderances are avoidable and what unavoidable. We want more business method in this business. We want scientific knowledge and accuracy instead of empiricism. But this will come. American horticulture is only in its youthful years. Its splendid miturity shall see every home in this magnificent country sweetened and beautified by its blossoming and fruitful presence. Let us labor cheerfully, my friends, until not only "The guests in prouder homes shall see Heaped with the orange and the grape, The fruit of the apple tree," but the table in every cottage in the land shall be daily filled with an abun dance of refreshing fruits and enriching flowers. And let us not rest until we have checked the destruction of the great forests which God has planted, and have restored to the hills and to the plains some portion of that natural shelter without which no land can long be fruitful and no civilization be permanent. At the close of his address, the President introduced Major S. H. Nowlin, of Little Rock, Ark., as follows: We have with us this evening Major Nowlin, of Arkansas, the gentleman who first proposed the organization of this Society, and to whom we feel much indebted for many efforts in its behalf. He has been invited to prepare a paper upon the origin and importance of this Society, which he will now present. ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. BY S. H. NOWLIN. It has devolved upon me, on the opening of this Convention of Fruit Growers, and the fourth annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society, to give to you some account of the origin of this Society and to impress upon this assembly the importance of this body to the country we are here to represent, as well as our possible influence in the amelioration and civilization of mankind. In doing this, I must beg the indulgence of my auditory for any appearance of egotism, for the reason that my own personal connection with the origination and organization of this Society renders it unavoidable. As there are many of you, no doubt, who are not familiar with the history of the Society of which we are members, I will endeavor, in as few words as possible, to recount the circumstances which led to its formation, and the short history connected with it up to the present time. In the fall of 1879, if my memory correctly serves me, the American Pomological Society held its biennial meeting at Rochester, N. Y. It was my fortune and honor to be sent as a delegate to that meeting by the Arkansas State Horticultural Society. To my surprise (I being a new citizen of my State), I learned that I was the first representative of Arkansas ever in that body. It was also the first time I had ever been sent as a delegate to any association of a national character, and I have no doubt I was personally as much of a novelty to the gray-haired kings of horticulture there assembled as the State I had come to represent; but be that as it may, I had gone there to learn of those wise men of the East, and announced my arrival. (Just here I may be pardoned for reading a little extract upon this incident taken from Green's Fruit Grower, of January, 1883): "Apples grown in Arkansas are selling in Rochester, N. Y., at three to five cents each-splended specimens. Tally one for Arkansas! This reminds us |