habits of these nefarious creatures and let you know what we know.  So I might call attention to one or two other departments—­but you know how much is being accomplished.  You get regular reports.  You have a committee to visit and investigate our fruit-breeding farms.  If I may judge from the reports which your committee makes—­I don’t know whether it is because it is one of your children and you are indulgent—­your committee seems to think good things are being done and distinct progress recorded at the fruit-breeding farm.  With your support and confidence we are enlarging the work there.  It seems we should have more land in the early future, and we may ask for your co-operation in convincing the powers that be that such increase of territory is necessary.

How many members have you? 3,407 members, I believe.  Perhaps you have more since that number was given this morning.  At any rate, there is a good number, and when you think of all the wisdom and all the experience that those 3,407 people have, it seems a great pity not to get it organized in better form.  Come and pick some more brains while these brains are still available and organize this great mass of knowledge.

Here is the next problem.  Who are the people that are going to take your places?  Who is to have a gold watch given him fifty years from now—­or given to her fifty years from now?  This thing is to go on, and how?  It goes on by discovering in Minnesota the horticulturally-minded people in the state; you must always be on the lookout for people who are to do the big things.  The great European governments are considering how they are going to keep their armies recruited, how the next generation is to be brought in and organized.  That is the same problem in every nation.  It is extremely necessary to put out dragnets for specialists.  There are probably thousands of men in Minnesota who are horticulturists, they are dormant horticulturists, and your business and ours is to try to discover them.  So the problem with us is how to get out the dragnet.

You know there is a great biological principle that is illustrated in the lower types of animals.  Millions of fish eggs are produced for every hundred that actually fertilize and amount to anything.  So when you are looking for results in a great subject, when you are trying to discover people, when you are putting out a dragnet, you have to try a very large number with the hope of discovering the relatively few who really show the divine spark, who are really the men that you are looking for.

It is a very interesting thing when you come to think about it, all the while we are looking for special ability in modern activities we do it by fashion.  Fashion is something that victimizes the ladies.  They do not care for fashion itself, it is thrust upon them from the outside.  Most women conform to fashion on the principle of protective coloring; they do not care for it themselves, but they do not want to be conspicuous by not conforming; so they protect themselves that way.