450 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Prof. Haynes said: I shall not await any instructions or suggestions from 

 the State Board of Education, but at the coming State institutes that I am 

 to conduct I shall take the liberty to call the attention of teachers to this 

 important saibject and awaken an interest in it. I can see so many ways in 

 which horticultural accompaniments may be made useful in the school room. 

 Flowers and the parts of flowers can be employed in teaching children to 

 count, and while learning numbers the little ones are absorbing interesting 

 facts in botany and floriculture. 



Dr. Bion Wheelan suggested that while making a syllabus for teachers' 

 institutes upon horticulture for the schools the fact be not lost sight of that 

 ripe fruits are the most proper diet for students and that flowers are employed 

 as a relief in diseases of the mind. They are restful, quieting, and ought ta 

 be a continuous accompaniment of every school room. With the bad air and 

 barren surroundings the little people who attend the average district school 

 have a tough time of it, and if we can induce teachers to educate parents- 

 and children to a lively appreciation of the delightful influence of the accom- 

 paniments of school premises which horticulture can bring the work will be 

 a grand one. 



Prof. Haynes suggested that an exercise at the State teachers' association 

 upon this subject would carry a good influence with it, and a resolution was 

 adopted instructing the secretary to communicate with the president of the 

 association and urge that the programme for next session contain a topic 

 which will bring out a discussion upon this important matter. Secretary 

 Garfield said that the balance of the evening would be given to a discussion 

 of questions pertaining to forestry. The general subject would be opened by 

 Col. F. M. Holloway, of Hillsdale. 



THE FORESTRY PROBLEM. 



Mr. President: — It is with diffldence that I attempt to express my- 

 self on the forestry problem in the presence of so many scientific minds as 

 are before me to-night. Minds who have made it their study since boyhood 

 to trace problems from cause to effect, and in so tracing to arrive at truths 

 and conclusions in harmony with the great laws of nature, which cannot be 

 violated with impunity or set aside with indifference. 



The ideas I shall advance on this subject will be drawn from observation 

 and experience for a period of fifty-four years' residence in our beautiful State 

 of Michigan. A period antedating the birth of many before me to-night, 

 ante-dating our statehood and co-extensive with the very first settlements 

 made in the then territory "save on our eastern borders." While I have put 

 upon record my views for the last twenty-five years on many of the agricult- 

 ural, horticultural and miscellaneous questions of the day that concern us 

 as an advancing people, I have never broached the subject of forestry or its 

 relation to successful and profitable farming or its influence as a conservator 

 of health or the invigorating efl'ects on the human system as it measures and 

 sets its mile-stones on the great thoroughfare of life's journey. Nor would 

 I now but from the fact that it may be the last opportunity I shall have in 

 contributing my mite to restoring to our country a substitute for the ruthless 

 destruction of our forests, which covered our landscape with sublime beauty 

 on almost every section of land in our State. 



It is a fact that cannot be gainsaid, that great mistakes were made by our 



