TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. . 123 



saythat,inmost cases, perhaps seventy-five per cent. of good could bedone 

 by spraying your own orchard whether your neighbors did or not, but that 

 other twent-five per cent, will hang by you forever. I don't want you to 

 hesitate to criticise my papers; that is why I presented them. I have no 

 axe to grind, and I have just come from a crowd that I was very much 

 more afraid of; I thought at times they were going to throw me out of 

 a window; it was a crowd of two hundred nurserymen. I am working, 

 with other horticulturists, for your interests. There are certain of your 

 interests that I look upon as being in my keeping, and if I don't look after 

 them the state has no use for me, and would be better off without me. 

 I want to get your ideas. What I have thought out with the twenty 

 years' experience I have had, may be in part wrong. As I say, you can 

 revise that scheme of mine, and re- revise it, and the more weak points you 

 tan suggest, the better I shall like it, because that is what I am after. 



Dr. Thomas : I am interested in this matter, though engaged in other 

 business. I often think, when a question of this kind comes up, of the 

 convention the mice had. one day. They thought it would be an excel- 

 lent idea to put a bell on the cat. She was too sly for them; they had a 

 convention and the vote was unanimous to bell the cat. Then one little 

 fellow stood up and asked, "Who will put the bell on the cat?" And of 

 course that knocked the whole business out. Now, then, I have had some 

 experience in other directions, in regard to passing laws. You know it 

 is an easy thing to pass a law, but the trouble with the American people 

 is that they are all law and no execution. In Europe they pass laws and 

 they carry them out every time. ]n the United States laws are passed, 

 but they are seldom carried out. The statute books are full of them on 

 the temperance question, on noxious weeds, etc. Michigan has a strong 

 law in regard to noxious weeds, Pennsylvania has one, and I dare say 

 New York has one, but no one pays any sort of attention. We have 

 weeds right in the city of Adrian, within the city limits, that produce 

 seed enough to seed the whole state. What are we to do? Do just what 

 this gentleman from New York says. You can't accomplish anything 

 of that kind until you get up a strong public sentiment. In Europe the 

 officers are in league with the government. In this country they are in 

 league, largely, with the evil-doer, and how can you expect the laws to be 

 carried out? I believe what you are doing this week is the right thing. 

 Help to start these societies in every part of the state. Meet with them 

 and talk with them, and eventually you will create an interest; and then, 

 if a law is passed, it will be carried out. But to pass a law in Michigan 

 today, that the old orchards are to be taken down and the homes of these 

 insect pests destroyed — no one would pay any attention. Even the good 

 state of New York could not do it and has not done it. The gentleman 

 who read that paper has presented the question — a thing that stands in 

 the way of our cultivation of fruit, either for personal benefit or for profit. 

 It stands straight in our way, and we will have to do as the temperance 

 people are doing, malfe a moral question of it, make a sentiment of it, 

 and see whether we can not by our own example and urging our example 

 upon others, create a sentiment that will destroy these things. I don't 

 believe we should depend upon the law just yet. 



Mr. A. Hamilton : I think the professor has suggested the proper 

 thing to do. While I agree with l^r. Thomas, that to create a sentiment 



