eir decision. (Applause.)

_Premiums Awarded to Gideon Memorial Contestants_:

1. The Plum Curculio--Edward A. Nelson.
2. Standardizing the Potato--A. W. Aamodt.
3. Marketing Fruit at Mankato--P. L. Keene.

The President: I am now going to call on some of the delegates to this
meeting. Mr. George H. Whiting, representing the South Dakota
Horticultural Society, we will ask him to come forward and say a word.

Mr. Whiting: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I do not know why Mr.
Cashman should ask me to come forward. I have not very much to say and
could have said it back there just as well. Perhaps you will wish I had
stayed back there.

I will say it is a pleasure to me to be with the Minnesota
horticulturists again. I have met with you quite a number of years but
not in the capacity of delegate. I did not expect to be a delegate this
time, thought I would leave the place for some younger man, but there
seemed to be no other present, and so I had to accept. I rather felt as
though I was not competent or did not care to take the responsibility of
making a report. I am getting old and a little tired, and I do not like
to do so much of that kind of work as I used to. However, I presume I
will have to do the best I can and let it go at that.

I will say you have a wonderful society here. It is a wonder to me
sometimes how you keep up the interest, how to keep up so much interest
in this work. There is no other state in the Union that has such a good,
live society. I attended a great many of the state societies last year.
I had the pleasure of attending the Missouri State Society. I can say
that you discount them and then some. An old state like Missouri and a
fruit state, you might say, it is supposed to be in the fruit belt, and
still you fellows up north here have all the vim and the snap and
determination to do things that those fellows do not do at all. It is
more in the man, I think sometimes, than it is in the location.

It used to be said that Minnesota was not a fruit state, you could not
grow apples in Minnesota. Well, I believe Mr. Gideon said that if he
could not grow apples in Minnesota he would not live there, something to
that effect, and he did not intend to leave the state either. Now, you
all know what success he made, and you that follow have a great deal to
be thankful for the work he did, and you are hoping--and I presume you
will be successful--to obtain an apple that is even better than the
W