custom, as is generally supposed, after passing through his pastoral or nomadic stage, but just as in the case of certain ants, he was first of all a collector and student of seeds.

It has even been supposed that the agricultural type of man originated at some remote period independently upon the American continent, and found his way, prior to the great ice age, into eastern Asia. His course must have been along the western shores of North America and by way of the Aleutian Islands. Arriving upon the Asiatic continent, he may have found it already sparsely populated by a blackskinned, curly-haired race, which gave way before his superior organization, the descendants of which are now to be looked for among the negroes of Africa, Australia, and certain isolated mountainous districts of eastern and southern Asia.

From agricultural man, thus early established in Asia, there may have originated the various civilizations with which human history begins. Thus, a kinship between the American race, the Egyptian, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, and modern Europeans has been believed to exist, and is a matter of ethnological theory.

It is impossible at this time to go into the varied evidence upon which such an hypothesis rests. One point that I might mention is the profound influence which the cultivation of seeds seems to have had upon certain primitive American religions. Thus among the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, degenerate survivors of a once glorious civilization, there exists a most extraordinary and complicated ritual, based upon the planting, cultivation, harvesting, and grinding of corn. Such a ritual shows how deeply seed cultivation has entered into the lives of these people.

It is, then, very possible that not only is a seed trade association the conservator of the real Ark of the Covenant of civilization, but that the American Seed Trade Association, from its connection with the American continent, is peculiarly in such a relation. In other words, this Association, meeting here today, is in a direct lineage of that oldest and most basal aristocracy of all, through the existence of which men first differentiated themselves from the lower orders of animals, and entered upon a path which led, through countless generations, to the high and complex civilization of today.

Now, as I have said, we are glad to have you here, first,

because we like Minneapolis and want you to know it and admire it as we do ourselves, and, second, because we respect and admire very highly the world's work which you represent.

It is also my pleasure to invite you to visit the Commercial Club while here. If the directors had met a little earlier, there would have been time to have issued a card of membership in the club to each member of this Association; but unfortunately the time was so limited between the last meeting of the directors and the assembly today, that it was not provided for. But the directors asked me to say to you that they wished each one of your members to consider the Commercial Club his home while here. The rooms are in the Andrus Building, on Nicollet Avenue, and at any time that you wish to drop in there to read the papers or lunch with us, we should be very glad indeed to have you do so. [Applause.]

THE PRESIDENT When we hear, as we have this morning, something that is entirely new to most of us, there comes into our minds a broader conception and a higher idea of the business in which we are engaged, when we think that we stand at the bottom, in a way, of so much of the world's prosperity.

Last year, at Rochester, in reply to the address of welcome given to us by that city, Mr. C. L. Allen, who made the response, referred to the fact that when he first knew Rochester it was known as the "Flour City," on account of the important position it then occupied in the manufacture of flour. Later on in his remarks he also said that when that industry waned, it still retained the name of the " Flower City," and properly so, from the reputation that it had acquired in the flower seed industry, largely due to the efforts of Mr. James Vick, of whom Mr. Allen very beautifully said that when he died, every flower put on mourning for him. You are today assembled in the real and I hope the lasting flour manufacturing city, the real" Flour City" of the world. I am informed in Rochester, during its palmiest days in the manufacture of flour, that the highest capacity of its mills was something like 6,000 barrels a day. Minneapolis has today a milling capacity of 65,000 barrels of flour.

Mr. Allen is with us today from the East, and he doubtless brings with him some of those flowers of speech for which he is so noted, and I will ask him to reply to the invitation so kindly given us by the Commercial Club through Prof. MacMillan.

MR. C. L. ALLEN- Mr. MacMillan, Mr. President, and gentlemen, it affords me very great pleasure, on behalf of the American Seed Trade Association, to thank you for the kind talk that you have given us. Your seed anthology is truly very interesting from the fact that agriculture had its birth in the seed, while every other industry has had agriculture for its foster mother and has been nestled in the lap of agriculture. Agriculture feeds all and clothes all, and it is of course to the seedsman that we owe very much of the success of American agriculture.

Mr. MacMillan has portrayed very beautifully the commercial glories of your city, which reminds me of a little incident that happened five years ago. I was over the Hartz Mountains in Germany, in a little bit of a village there, and the gentleman who was escorting me around on the trip said: “I want you to see something." He took me right across to a little baker's shop and there showed me a barrel of Minneapolis flour; and while I had never been in Minneapolis in my life, I never felt so good as I did when I saw that barrel of flour, and I then regretted exceedingly that Minneapolis should not have been a suburb of New York instead of a suburb of Chicago, as some of our friends claim. [Laughter.]

Now, this is no time for any extended remarks. I have got enough to say later on. But I will say to you, Professor, that we shall enjoy your hospitality and the city's most heartily; we shall drink your beer and smoke your cigars and enjoy all the pleasures that you have, and I think you will find that the American Seed Trade Association as a class will stand as much good treatment as any class of tradesmen you ever have had among you. [Laughter and applause.]

THE PRESIDENT Mr. Allen refers to Minneapolis as being a suburb of Chicago, and I notice that some of our people look a little savage over that remark, but he means it in this way, and we take it as a compliment too: We have in this

city a very wise arrangement, a regulation called the patrol limits, and liquor is not allowed to be sold anywhere outside of those limits. The lines are fixed, and very firmly held, and the regulation is very strictly enforced. Naturally this is a great protection to the residential districts. It makes property valuable, and on that account we are glad to consider ourselves as being outside of the patrol limits of Chicago, leaving

Chicago to pursue all those things which are bad, and leaving us in the best residential section, that is, the suburbs. [Laughter and applause.]

We have with us this morning Prof. Greene, professor of botany in the Minnesota School of, Agriculture. Several years ago, while at Washington, I was very much pleased to hear from Prof. True that the Minnesota School of Agriculture, young as our state is, occupied a foremost position, and in many respects the foremost position of any of the agricultural schools. Prof. Greene is here today, and I know we shall all be very much pleased to hear from him, and I take great pleasure in introducing the professor to you.

PROF. GREENE- Mr. President and gentlemen of the convention, Mr. Northrup has very kindly given me an opportunity to present to you an invitation to meet the faculty of the College of Agriculture and of the Experiment Station.

Perhaps it might be well that I should say just a word as to the growth of that institution. A little over fourteen years ago was the advent, you might say, of the experiment station. work and the department of agriculture in the University, although there had been the same department previous to that time. The growth has been quite phenomenal, both of the university and of the agricultural 'department. At that time there was not a single student in the college or school of agriculture. Not a single student there. Last year we had in the department of agriculture something over 600 students. Now, we make a point of filling our agricultural department full of agriculture. It isn't something they go into and not take agriculture. We make agriculture of the main importance. We are proud of the fact that we turn out farmers. We are proud of the farmers. We have not got so fine that a farmer is not good enough for us. Not a bit of it. We are proud of the farmer, we are proud of our land, we are proud of our school, and we are going to make it the best school of agriculture in this country. We think it is today.

Now, just a word as to the growth of the university. Then there were about 400 students in the University of Minnesota. Today there are something over 3,600. In 14 years there has been a growth of 3,200 students in our university. In the agricultural department there has been a growth from nothing to 600. You see it is a phenomenal growth. We

have a good equipment; we have a farm of between four and five hundred acres on which we carry on very interesting experiments in the line of seed breeding and in forage crops, along horticultural lines, and so on, which it seems to me would interest you all.

We would be very glad indeed to have this Association come out as a body, or have the members of the Association come out individually and visit us. If you will set a time when you can come, we shall be pleased to meet you at the car line and furnish you a conveyance from the car line to the experiment station. You can find directions from the clerk here in the hotel as to getting there, or I might say this to you, although perhaps you may not remember it, but the Como Harriet cars going to St. Paul go right by this hotel door and stop within half a mile of the experiment station. There are good sidewalks all the way to the station, and we shall be very glad indeed to take care of you; or if you will call us up by phone when you are coming, we will try and arrange to have a conveyance there to bring you over. [Applause.]

THE PRESIDENT—I can assure every one who will visit the experiment station that he will feel very well rewarded. It is a grand institution, and one of which we are all very proud, and I hope, even though we cannot go over there as a body, that many will find their way over there before leaving. We might have gone over as a body had it not been for the cupidity of our friend May of St. Paul, a St. Paul characteristic. I said to Mr. May while we were trying to arrange for a little program of entertainment that we would be generous to him and that he could have you for a little while, but he gobbled up the whole afternoon and evening, and that I am afraid will prevent our getting over there for the afternoon.

Every year at this time we are called upon to note, as we exchange greetings, that there is some familiar face missing. This year death has touched the organization and has taken from us Herbert A. Clark of the Everett B. Clark Company. Mr. E. B. Clark is, I believe, a charter member of this organization, and has been present, I think, at every meeting of the Association except this. We urged him to be present here, but he did not feel that he could meet with us at this time. Herbert A. Clark died on April 7th. It is proper to record our remembrance of him, and the respect we felt for him