180 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The columns of all our State newspapers have been open to all announce- 

 ments and reports without expense to us, and several have taken especial pains 

 to report the full proceedings of our meetings. Our society has now been in 

 existence ten years, and its work has been accomplished very largely by men 

 who have received little or no personal reward, and through their efforts the 

 society has taken a creditable if not a commanding position among organiza- 

 tions of its kind, and when these efforts are so far appreciated as to be seconded 

 by corporations which reap a goodly share of the resulting benefits, the work- 

 ers are given heart to go on. 



CONCLUSION. 



In furnishing my annual statement, I must call your attention to the desira- 

 bility of having a more even distribution of the burdens of the society. In 

 the words of our friend, Mr. Emmons Buell of Kalamazoo, " When a man 

 asks me for information in horticulture that has cost hundreds of dollars to 

 secure, and I hand him a volume containing the desired intelligence, and ask 

 him to take the valuable facts and leave a dollar for the society that publishes 

 them, I want him to gratefully put his hand down in his pocket and hand out 

 the dollar." There is a double result from money thus invested : it pays for 

 good work, and interests the man who makes the investment in that work. 



President Lyon read a short paper in the nature of suggestions to the 

 society as he closed another year's service. 



PRESIDENT LYON'S ADDRESS. 



The close of the year seems to be a very proper time to take a retrospect of 

 our doings, and to consider the workings of the various processes that have, 

 from time to time, been put in operation ; to devise plans for rendering them 

 more effective in the future ; and to consider, at the same time, whether or not 

 our duty to the people of the State calls for further effort, in any new direc- 

 tion, for the advancement or development of the elevating and civilizing pro- 

 cesses which we, as a society, are supposed to especially represent. 



At our last annual meeting, in pursuance of a suggestion then submitted, 

 the executive board were encouraged to devise and put in operation plans cal- 

 culated to bring the society into more direct and intimate relation with the 

 people of the State, by increasing its memberships, and distributing them 

 more generally over the State. 



The board, in considering this subject, soon came to learn that, while the 

 whole number of volumes of our transactions issued by the State will only 

 supply about one volume to three hundred of our entire population, and while 

 hundreds of persons, who might desire to read and profit by them, are unable 

 to obtain them, large numbers of them go into the hands of persons who fail 

 to make any use of them ; but either leave them idle upon their shelves, or com- 

 mit them to the waste basket — a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, when we 

 consider that the society is made the custodian of a large number of these 

 volumes, and is therefore held responsible for a wise and careful distribution 

 of them. 



The fact had also long been obvious that while the indiscriminate giving 

 away of these volumes had the effect to diminish their value in the estimation 

 of the public, it at the same time operated directly to the diminution of 



