ANNUAL MEETING AT SAGINAW. 481 



The joint arrangement for the continuation of this important work, which 

 has been heretofore made only from year to year) must be made if at all, 

 at the annual meeting of the executive committee of the State Agricultural 

 society, to occur early in January next. 



Circumstances, however, point to grave uncertainty as to the practicability 

 of its continuance, and, for this reason, it becomes us to carefully consider 

 m what other equivalent direction our future efforts can be bestowed, with 

 the effect of securing the results heretofore accomplished, and at the same 

 time continuing the advance so effectively begun; since past exoerience in 

 our own as well as in other States assures us that, under the management of 

 an exclusively agricultural board, little actual progress of a horticultural 

 character is to be anticipated, while, with intermitted effort, retrogression 

 must quite as certainly follow. 



The almost exclusively commercial tendencies of societies as well as of in- 

 dividuals, especially in portions of the more exclusively fruit growing sections 

 of the State, with their comparative indifference to strictly horticultural mat- 

 ters, aside from their more direct pecuniary bearings, presents for considera- 

 tion the problem of the duty of this society in the premises; the problem 

 being whether the whole matter is to be left in the hands of existing local 

 organizations, whether we are to make the effort to induce the societies to 

 reform and improve their practice, or whether the effort shall be made inde- 

 pendently of existing organizations to impress the people with the importance 

 of the subject, above and aside from commercial considerations. 



While under existing laws much is being done in the way of collecting 

 horticultural statistics, such collections are obviously intended mainly for 

 purely commercial purposes, for which, doubtless, they are of much value. 



As a means, however, of showing the actual horticultural importance of the 

 State, they require to be more ample, and, at the same time, more specific. 



Probably in few if any other northern States is so large a relative space de- 

 voted to family or farm orchards, while the areas occupied by commercial 

 orchards and by small fruit plantations is believed to be equaled nowhere 

 else save, possibly, in the seaboard States of ISTew Jersey, Maryland and Dela- 

 ware. To properly express the magnitude of these interests in the State, the 

 areas devoted to each class of orchards, vineyard and small fruits, as well as 

 the annual product and the value of each, should be separately reported. 

 The product of farm orchards consumed upon the premises, being of neces- 

 sity estimated, should be separately reported. The estimated cash value of 

 the plantations in each case, including that of the land occupied, should also 

 be given separately. 



Still farther, in order to gain a correct knowledge of the amount and value 

 of the yearly product of such plantations, both the quantity and the value of 

 the annual product of each for the current year, should be accompanied by 

 an average of such product for a series of years last past ; since in no other 

 apparent way can the discrepancies arising from yearly variations of the crop 

 be equalized, and a just conception formed of the average value of such 

 products and of the real or relative importance and the relative growth from 

 year to year, of the horticultural element, in the wealth of the State. 



Doubtless much might be done by the society, in at least a few localities, 

 toward the collecting and digesting of such statistics, but to properly accom- 

 plish such a work, would require the searching and far reaching appliances 

 of the State, while even these, in order to insure accuracy, as well as general 



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