SUMMER MEETING. 99 



or worm. The wonderful transformations going on about ua every day 

 in the insect world are well worth our time and thought. 



We need a thought of the interesting and beautiful in life to make 

 lighter the hard burdens men must bear, and if the study of the plants 

 and insects for the pleasure to be derived from it will make farm life 

 more attractive it should be given a proper place on the farm. How- 

 ever, in our work last winter the practical side of Horticulture was 

 ever first. The insects were studied for the protection of our fruits 

 and gardens with the best methods of destroying injurious ones. The 

 lectures on the nature and life history of the different fungi gave us 

 the reason for our work in spraying and destroying the diseased fruit, 

 while landscape gardening and iloriculture will help us in improving 

 our farms and the country around, as the planting of trees and other 

 ornamentals is becoming a practical question in many sections of the 

 country. 



A subject which interested me was plant propagation and its rela- 

 tion to the improvement of our fruits and garden produce, and the 

 different methods employed were spoken of by different lecturers. 

 The experimental station is doing what it can to improve our fruits by 

 selecting the best for grafts and buds as well as seed, and also by cross- 

 pollination. Every horticulturist should understand this work, and as 

 far as possible, aid in carrying it on. In our orchards, for example, 

 there are trees that bear superior fruit and yield abundantly ; we could 

 expect better trees grown from scions taken from those trees than 

 from those taken from trees having inferior quality of fruit. In our 

 vines and berries we know there is a choice. Then why not try propa- 

 gating from the best instead of going haphazard as is usually done? 



The nuseryman, to whom this work naturally belongs, meets with 

 too much competition to carry it on to any great extent, so it has fallen 

 to the horticulturist to carry on this most interesting work. We have 

 heard how much the perfection of our fruit depends on cross-pollina- 

 tion, and if he could follow farther and grow the seed we might, in 

 time, by proper cross-pollination produce wonderful results. 



A month spent in nursery work not only gave us a glimpse of 

 what the nurseryman does, but how the fruit-grower can apply it to his 

 own home. We studied enough of the nature of the plants to under- 

 stand why so many of these wonders of which the traveling salesman 

 tell could not be expected to come true to the description. The nature 

 of grafting and budding was explained, together with work in the graft- 

 ingroom. We were told of the proper care of the plant, not only in 

 the nursery row, but on its way to the farm and after the buyer has it in 

 his own hands. The farmer, often through his own ignorance, loses his 



