22 GENERAL HISTORY. 



The Michigan Farmer has been and is intimately associated with the hor- 

 ticulture of tlie State, It was the outcome of an enterprise commenced at 

 Detroit in 184:1, and received its present name at Jackson in 1843. Its his- 

 tory will be given in a separate section. 



The State Agricultural Society, to which the horticulture of the State 

 has been and is largely indebted, was organized in March, 1849. For its his- 

 tory a separate section is appropriated. 



The same is also true of the State Agricultural College, opened in May, 

 1857. 



The original State constitution provided for the continuance of the State 

 capital at Detroit until 1847, when the Legislature was authorized to deter- 

 mine its permanent location, which, greatly to the surprise of the people, 

 and perchance of even the Legislature, it was fixed at Lansing, which at that 

 time was but an incipient village in a comparatively unknown and unimproved 

 region. The location of the capital here has, beyond doubt, essentially has- 

 tened the settlement and improvement of the vicinity agriculturally, and in 

 a still higher degree horticulturally, through the bearing it has had upon the 

 character of the population and the tendency of wealth and refinement to 

 the locality. 



In 1853 the Detroit & Milwaukee Eailroad was opened to Grand Rapids, and 

 not long after to Grand Haven, thus opening a naturally rich agricultural 

 region and rendering it available for the growth of the commercial products 

 of horticulture, to which much of its soil is well adapted. 



Prior to the rise of commercial fruit culture in the State fruit seems to 

 have been, in law, held to be without value, and for that reason as not requir- 

 ing statutory protecton. Public opinion also ran so strongl}' in the same 

 direction that raids upon fruit yards, orchards and melon "patches," both 

 by day and night, were commonly indulged in, even by persons of fair repu- 

 tation, while to attempt to punish the aggressors by legal process was to 

 incur the ridicule, if not even the censure of society. 



When fruit came to be to a considerable extent a merchantable commodity, 

 and in consequence, its disappearance in this manner a pecuniary loss, a 

 change gradually became manifest in the views of at least the better class of 

 people on the subject, which ultimately found expression in the enactment of 

 laws for the protection of plants, trees and fruits — laws all the more stringent 

 on account of the practical impossibility of protecting them against intrusion 

 and plunder. 



As indicating the general tenor of the several statutes enacted for this 

 purpose, one of the earlier, if not even the earliest, is quoted as follows: — 



" AN ACT to protect vineyards in the State of Michigan. 



*' Section 1. TJie People of the State of Michigan enact, That no person 

 shall enter a vineyard in the State of Michigan, during the months of Au- 

 gust, September and October and eat or carry away any of the fruit of a 

 vineyard without the consent of the owner or occupant of the same, under a 

 penalty of five dollars fine, or twenty days imprisonment in the county jail, 

 or both, in the discretion of the court, for each offense committed. 



"Approved April 3, 1869. 



Soon after the appearance of "peach tree yellows," at St. Joseph, with its 

 threatened appearance at South Haven, the conviction of the peach growers 

 at the latter place grew into confident belief of its contagious character, and 



