106 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The Brazilian has to compete with the monkeys and the toucans and the 

 parrots for this fruit, for they have all learned that the thin pellicle of 

 fruit is rich and nutritious. The Indian puts his bare big toes into a 

 loop made of the asai leaves, for they are tough, both toes and leaves, and, 

 grasping the tree, draws his feet up and pressing the loop against the 

 trunk, raises his body, and in this way rapidly ascends to the fruit, which 

 he cuts off and lets carefully down with a string. The trees are slender 

 and never stand straight, and sometimes the stem breaks and lets him down, 

 but the ground is soft and swampy below. 



Then to this immense Amazon region, as yet practically undeveloped, 

 we must not only look for new factors in our food products, for a new sup- 

 ply of cotton, for new ornamental and useful woods, and for new drugs, 

 but also for new and finer fruits than any that have yet reached our tables. 



Wednesday Morning Session. 



Beginning the session, Mr. Albert Jackson of Lowell introduced the 

 subject of freight classification of peaches. The classification is very 

 unjust as to peaches, said Mr. Jackson. In crates they are reckoned as 

 first class; but in baskets (any kind of basket) they are charged one and 

 one half first class rates. All other fruits are first class only, even berries 

 and grapes. This comes about through the rate having been first class in 

 the first place, when peaches were shipped in crates, but increased when 

 the round fifth-bushel baskets came into use. There was reason enough 

 for it then, but there is none now, with the fruit all shipped in bushel or 

 climax baskets. Bushels are even of less trouble than crates. The local 

 railway men in Grand Rapids admit the wrong, but say the remedy lies 

 with the freight classification committee in New York, and it takes a long 

 while to effect a change. At a meeting of the Grand River Valley society, 

 the West Michigan society, and the Fruitgrowers' association, in Grand 

 Rapids, lately, a resolution for a joint committee of those societies and 

 the State society was passed, to secure from the railway companies a 

 favorable change of this unjust classification, and three members chosen, 

 and the secretary of the West Michigan society instructed to write Secre- 

 tary Reid, which I understand he has not done. I move the appointment 

 of a member of the committee. 



The motion was carried without dissent, and Mr. J. J. Parshall of Ann 

 Arbor was made a member of the joint committee. 



Chairman Garfield made some felicitous remarks about our sister states, 

 Ohio and New York, and the neighboring province of Ontario, and called 

 out representatives of the three who were present. 



