46 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



that ten by ten inches. When we first started in we ran the plow down 

 twenty inches. We stored the water up in the ground and held it there. 

 We commenced working the ground before it began to dry up. We set 

 out our plants and immediately ran a weeder over. We go right through 

 the plants, and we have kept that thing up. We have simply kept the 

 water from running away. It is snow water that came there last winter 

 and we don't let it get away. Most of you that cultivate will understand 

 this about next century. People will roll up their ground and let the air 

 circulate through it. I have a cultivator of which I think everything. 

 It cuts the dirt all up and leaves it fine and friable. I don't think we 

 have cultivated those strawberries over fifteen times this spring so far! 

 We have taken the surface ground and put it down cellar, and kept it 

 cool as we could, and yet it will dry right up. Farmers should wake up 

 to the idea that stirring the ground does not make it moist, but it lets 

 the air in and out. Whenever you get air through the cultivated ground 

 it becomes moist earth. With a proper weeder you can run through any 

 crop. If you will do that thing, I think you will dispense with a great 

 deal of irrigation. Give me good, rich soil, where I can manipulate it, 

 and put it down in proper shape, and in Michigan we can get along with- 

 out irrigation. We must learn to get the ground so it will hold sevenil 

 times the amount of water, and then keep it there. 



AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. 



Prof. Taft gave notice that at the next regular meeting would be pre- 

 sented an amendment to Article IV of the constitution of the Societi', 

 relative to the time of holding the annual meeting, and changing that 

 time from the present regulation. 



BENEFITS OF A BOTANIC GARDEN TO HORTICULTURE. 



BY DR. W. J. BEAL, MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL ' COLLEGE. 



In a very modest way a beginning was made in 1877, along a shady 

 bank near the brook and not far from the greenhouses. 



The garden now under consideration consists of three acres lying on 

 the north bank of the Cedar river and extending to the northeast on both 

 sides of a small brook. This area does not include the arboretum, nor 

 the greenhouses, nor the adjoining lawn and flower beds and plats of 

 shrubbery with their numerous varieties and races. The space of which 

 I now speak consists largely of the higher portion of the river flats, most- 

 ly above high-water mark. On the banks are a variety of shrubs and 

 small trees of nature's own planting. The artificial portion of this gar- 

 den, then, consists mainly of hardy herbs with a few shrubs — 1,200 to 

 1,500 species. 



At first considerable pains was taken to make, by means of boulder 

 stones, small pockets a foot or two in diameter for each species, but in 



