12-4 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



sion, and yet the evidence adduced does not show greater variation in 

 grafts than in cuttings rooted in the soil. 



Farmers often find several kinds of potato in the same hill, and imagine 

 the seed has been mixed. The potato has only one parent, and there- 

 fore the presence of another variety could not have any influence in 

 effecting a change. These bud variations are the result of a stimulus, 

 and yet may be, and generally are, of a permanent nature. When grown 

 from' seed-balls, potatoes, like any other seedling, are inlluenced by two 

 parents, and the variations are more pronounced. 



In recent years the sharp demand for the cheapest trees and plants has 

 been so great that nurserymen have been forced to grow them with the 

 least possible expense. Hitherto planters have looked only to the 

 description of the variety as a guide in making selections. The individual 

 plants which composed that variety all stood on an absolute equality. 

 They assumed that one plant was just as good as another for the purpose 

 of propagation. 



In the near future the nurseryman will be required to show the history 

 and manner of breeding his plants, just as carefully as the stock-breeder 

 is required to show the pedigree of his breeding animals. Growers are 

 becoming tired of furnishing land, manure, and tillage for trees and plants 

 incapable of furnishing fine fruit. In the presence of all this evidence it 

 is absurd to say we can not build up and maintain a higher fruiting 

 stamina of plants and trees, and so manipulate them that they shall 

 every year bear a large crop of luscious fruit. 



For the past several years the whole trend in fruitgrowing has been 

 to extend the acreage until growers could neither properly cultivate, fer- 

 tilize, nor prune. The result is that glutted markets have confronted 

 us, and our cry has been for better facilities, for a more general distribu- 

 tion, while people all around us were not consuming one half the fruit they 

 should because the qualit}' was so poor. Let every man consider well 

 his resources in determining how many acres he will plant, and never 

 put a tree nor plant in the ground without a knowledge of, and ability 

 to meet, its requirements. 



The present destructive system of crowding mongrel trees and plants 

 upon every possible acre, without proper facilities for caring for them, 

 must cease. I am greatly pleased to know that our Agricultural college, 

 w^hich is now becoming so generally appreciated by farmers, has provided 

 a short course in horticulture, so that our busy young men and women 

 can utilize the leisure of winter months in securing a practical and 

 scientific training in the management of plants. When these enterprising 

 young people have become skilled in the mysteries of plant life and in 

 propagating, their trained eyes will detect the slight variations, and they 

 will be persistent in accumulating knowledge of them, and under the in- 

 tensive horticulture of that day Michigan will be accorded the high place 

 to which her natural resources and advantages justly entitle her. 



