140 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In the senior year the agricultural students may elect for a term the 

 study of botany, but the time is not devoted to a general study of the sub- 

 ject. They study exclusively fungi which are injurious to farm and gar- 

 den crops or to weeds, such as rusts, smuts, anthracnose, mildews, blights, 

 molds, etc. 



If any of the topics named above were taught in the laboratories of 

 agriculture or horticulture they would readily be accepted as appropriate 

 for those subjects. 



To assist in this work, the botanical department has a very good equip- 

 ment of microscopes, both simple and compound; maps, charts, and other 

 apparatus, convenient rooms, many books and reports. A considerable 

 number of the best books are furnished in fives and tens, in the labora- 

 tory, to use on demand. We have a fine herbarium, but, better than this 

 for class-room work, we have a well arranged grass-garden of one hundred 

 or more species, a weed garden of eighty species, and a beautiful botanical 

 garden of about one thousand species, and an arboretum, to say nothing 

 of the endless list of things to be found growing on the campus, on the 

 farm, in the orchards, gardens, and greenhouses. 



There are almost too many, as they sometimes tend to confuse and per- 

 haps discourage the beginner. 



Recently Professor Taft has undertaken to plant a grove exclusively 

 devoted to trees and shrubs native to Michigan. Although we have them 

 nearly all elsewhere scattered about, in this plat they will be together with 

 no foreigners to confuse the student. 



The trees and shrubs of the world are now in process of grouping into 

 natural families on the campus. In one suitable spot the elms and their 

 relatives, in another the willows and their cousins, the poplars; elsewhere 

 the oaks and their allies, and in yet other places maples, and so on. 



One, or perhaps we should say two, rooms of the laboratory are used by 

 the experiment station. Immense numbers of weeds, wild plants, grasses, 

 seeds, etc., are sent from all sources for identification. To aid in this 

 work, first comes a good man for the place, C. F. Wheeler; second, a 

 large herbarium; third, some 1,500 lots of seeds of weeds, etc., in small 

 bottles, all labeled. Every day the professor of agriculture or of horticul- 

 ture, or some of their helpers or some of our students call for assistance 

 in solving some botanical puzzle. 



Every week, nearly, there is a meeting of the botany club or natural 

 history society, which in reality are horticultural or agricultural clubs. 



We have no botanical, agricultural, or horticultural museums worthy of 

 the name, but quite a good many specimens stored away waiting for the 

 State Board of Agriculture to muster courage enough to ask for money 

 with which to erect a suitable buiding. 



I have just come from the first meeting of the State Academy of Science 

 held in the capitol. The objects of this society have an economic trend, 

 probably influenced that way by work of the Agricultural college and 

 such societies as the one here assembled. Its objects are to advance the 

 interests of agriculture, botany, forestry, zoology, anthropology, omitting 

 horticulture owing to the existence of a state society especially founded 

 for that subject. 



I call your attention to the work of this society, believing that it will 

 interest many of you. 



No special investigations in plant physiology have been undertaken for 

 this report. 



