INDIANA HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 479 



B. P. Johnson: It is with some little embarrassment that I come 

 before you this afternoon and claim the right of maliing an apology -for 

 my appearance. I was somewhat mislead as to the time of this meeting. 

 I was expecting this convention to come off about the 20th of December, 

 and I have made very little preparation for this occasion. Possibly you 

 are just as well off as if I had had two or three weelcs' time to malie 

 what I might term the necessary preparations in that I will not take so 

 much of your time and will leave it for more important business, possibly. 



I am to speali upon the value of statistical information as applied to 

 agricultural and horticultural pursuits. Of course it is generally conceded 

 and recognized by all that statistics from any standpoint are good, but 

 a man who could bring out of a statistical subject anything of an enter- 

 taining character mig'it be regarded as a wonder. But, nevertheless, there 

 is an individuality whicn has given this subject attention as something 

 of importance and something interesting, and they may be presented to us 

 from time to time. Perhaps there is no other line of business in the state 

 of Indiana that is so difficult to locate in a statistical sense as the horti- 

 cultural business, simply from the fact that there is less organization and 

 less organized effort along that line than in many other pursuits of the 

 kind. We are compelled to make use of the public officers in different 

 counties and townships in the state. The law makes a provision from 

 which we may get information from the assessors, trustees and public 

 officials, but generally they know so little about horticultural interests— 

 these public officials do not seem to come in touch with it— and so it has 

 been a very difficult matter for us to get any figures upon which to base 

 our horticultural pursuits. You take the average township, and there are 

 1.017 townships in Indiana, and in the average township, aside from the 

 general interest that may be manifested on the part of the farmers, there 

 is very little attention to horticultural pursuits. Each farmer has an 

 orchard for himself, but when the gatherer of statistical information 

 comes along he does not have his information classified, and he is not 

 able to give it in such a way as to be of value to the bureau, and hence 

 we are not able, in a great many instances, to get information touching 

 this line that would be of value to tliose who are interested in horticulture. 

 This is not true in a sense of agricultural pursuits, because the people of 

 Indiana generally are engaged in agricultural pursuits— that is their prin- 

 cipal business. The horticultural work is simply a side line. The value 

 of the reports along these lines, it may be readily seen, is of not much 

 value to the student of statistics. The cultivation of a piece of corn in a 

 certain part of the state by a successful farmer, under certain conditions, 

 serves as an inspiration to the other farmers, and they try to see if they 

 can be successful, and this leads to better results. I have before me 

 an instance in which a man imder certain conditions raised one hundred 

 and twenty bushels of corn on a small acreage of land, per acre. The 

 publication of that fact and the conditions under which it was accom- 



