STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 135 



with i860, it has published an annual report (except that of 1861 and 

 1862, which were embraced in one volume). The total number of its 

 published pages is nearly 4,000, and embraces papers and discussions 

 upon all branches of horticulture, and upon the related sciences of bot- 

 any, entomology, as well as the proceedings of kindred and subordinate 

 societies. In 1867, it received a new impulse, and its efficiency was 

 greatly promoted by a State appropriation of $2,000 per annum, which 

 has been continued since that time. 



Its numbers have never been large, but the influence it has exerted, 

 directly and indirectly, has been great. It has not only corrected nomen- 

 clature, aiid disseminated information as to the best varieties and the best 

 modes of cultivation in fruits, but it has done much to call attention to 

 the great need and possibility of line fences in our great prairies, and to the 

 related and equally important topic of tree-culture. It has done more to 

 call attention to the study of botany and economical entomology, and to 

 the cause of agricultural education, than any similar body in the country. 

 Its views and policies have usually been broad and catholic, and it has 

 always been freer from what, for want of a better name, I will call old- 

 fogy ism, than most bodies of men. Upward and onward has ever been 

 its motto. 



HORTICULTURAL PROGRESS. 



Meanwhile, horticultural production has wonderfully increased. In 

 1840, the orchard products of this State were valued at $126,756; in 

 1850 — about the time of the first horticultural organization, and before 

 the railroad era was fairly entered upon — they amounted to $446,049 ; in 

 i860, to $1,122,123, and in 1870, to $3,571,789, being an increase of 

 800 per cent, in twenty years. According to the returns of our assessors, 

 about one acre in every hundred of our State is planted in orchards at 

 this time. The increase in other branches of horticulture, in the grow-, 

 ing of grapes and of small fruits, has been even more marked ; and 

 whatever be the discouragements — and they have been many — of the 

 horticulturists, the love of the " beautiful and the good " overcame them 

 sooner or later. 



PROFIT AND LOSS. 



These discouragements are the meteorological changes which appar- 

 ently make our climate extremes of heat, cold, drouth and wet greater 

 and more destructive to vegetable life than formerly; the increase of 

 diseases, which accumulate, as it were, in districts long planted ; the 

 increase of insects by the same cumulative process, and the deterioration 

 and decay that come of weakened vitality, and the neglect that comes 

 from unfruitfulness in decrepit trees, and loss of hope on the part of the 

 planter. 



On the other hand, there is a better understanding of natural sciences 

 in their application to practical horticulture. Both botany and vegetable 

 physiology, even a little understood, enable nurserymen and fruit-growers 

 to cast aside a great many suspicions of the craft, and to guard the weak 

 points of their wards. It is to be noticed in this connection, also, as a 



