68 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE 



It thus becomes apparent that protracted care and labor are 

 imperiously demanded for successful fruit culture. A detailed 

 statement of the mode and manner of practically applying this 

 labor, we must decline to enter upon, and for two cogent rea- 

 sons: First, because our masters in the art are present before 

 us ; and second, because our personal knowledge and experi- 

 ence have been far more exclusively devoted to the consumption 

 than to the growing of fruit. 



In concluding our remarks upon this special topic, it is 

 peculiarly gratifying to be able to say that the measure of your 

 past success in fruit culture is full of hope and promise for the 

 future. For these auspicious results furnish a sure guaranty 

 that intelligence, skill, and energy have been already embarked 

 in the enterprise ; and that the Michigan State Pomological 

 Society will make this, their first anniversary, a bow of prom- 

 ise, spanning our whole peninsula, flooding it with brilliant 

 beams from its parti-colored ground-work, and pledging to us 

 a renewal of the Garden of Eden, on the eastern shore of Lake 

 Michigan. 



From the slight glances we have been able to take of the 

 various fields of labor in the great department of agriculture, 

 we may glean the great lesson of the hour, that both excel- 

 lence and progress must depend upon intelligence and effort, 

 abiding in, and springing from, a well-developed manhood. 



That this lesson should have a peculiar force and signifi- 

 cance with our rural classes, may be demonstrated in a few 

 words. First, because the precious deposit of our national 

 prosperity, glory, and honor; the prevalence of intelligence 

 and virtue; the maintenance of social order; the perpetuity 

 of our free institutions, and the hopes of our race, are largely 

 in the keeping of our agricultural classes. 



And second, there is far less of trust and stability in other 

 departments. With them, wealth is more emphatically power, 

 and that power is liable to be abused. In our larger towns 

 and cities, *with their mixed population and heavy influx of 



