472 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



II. Improvement and maintenance of old varieties. 



a. By methods of tillage. 



b. By fertilizers. 



c. By change of stock, crossing and hybridizing. 



III. Introduction and testing of new varieties and species. 



a. Promising wild fruits and ornamental plants. 



b. Japanese and Chinese plants. 



c. Russian plants. 



d. Domestic cultivated plants. 



IV. Physiological researches. 



V. Pathological researches ; investigations concerning diseases of plants, especially in 

 Michigan, peach yellows, rotting of plums and cherries, falling of the plum leaf, 

 apple scab, tomato rot, potato rot, blackberry and raspberry rust, grape rots and 

 mildews, strawberry rust, gooseberry mildew, lettuce mold, celery rust. 



VI. Experiments upon the relative cost of methods of culture and upon manipulations, 



tools, etc. 



Respectfully submitted, 



L. H. Bailey, 



W. K. Gibson, 



A. G. GULLEY, 



Committee. 

 DETERIORATION OF MICHIGAN APPLES. 



Mr. E. W. Barber, of Jackson, in the Morning Patriot of that city, on one 

 of the days of the State Fair, said: 



" President T. T. Lyon, of the Michigan Pomological Society, who knows more about 

 fruit than any other man in the Northwest, and perhaps in the United States, was in- 

 terviewed by a correspondent of the Free Press at the State Fair on Wednesday, and 

 presented some ideas that are well worth reproducing. It has been often remarked of 

 late years that the apples of Southern Michigan are not as fine as they used to be. Many 

 of the orchards are old and have been poorly cared for. Necessarily the quality of the 

 fruit has deteriorated. Mr. Lyon says there has been some advancement and consider- 

 able deterioration. The farm orchards are not as good as formerly. An exhibition was 

 held at Buffalo about twenty-five years ago and the fruit from Michigan, even of the 

 'Commonest varieties, was superior in color, size, appearance and flavor to anything that 

 the orchards of New York could show. At present the ordinary farm fruit is no better 

 than that grown in the older places in the East. This result comes largely from the 

 removal of the forests, the changed atmospheric conditions and the penetrating influ- 

 ences of wind-swept regions. Trees sheltered by wind-breaks or tracts of timber land 

 thrive better and mature finer fruit than do trees in open and exposed fields. The finest 

 apples, plums and pears of the ordinary varieties come from the northern counties of 

 Michigan, where the ground has been but freshly cleared and much of the surrounding 

 timber remains. 



" With double the forest area we now have in Southern Michigan, no doubt the re- 

 mainder of the land would be worth more for fruit and other crops than it is now, but 

 there is a great need of new orchards of the best varieties of apples. Just now much 



