186 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



nection with the annual State fairs, that if this society is to conduct the 

 department as heretofore, our allowances be restored to the former amounts at 

 the earliest practicable moment. The arrangement for such joint exhibit is 

 renewed from year to year, at the annual session of the executive committee 

 of the Agricultural society, which occurs early in January. It is necessary for 

 such purpose that a representative of this society be present at that meeting 

 with authority to act in the premises. 



The most effective means of bringing home to the consciousness of the mass 

 of our people the importance of the conservation and renewal of our forests is 

 a subject that has long engaged the attention of thoughtful men; but between 

 the greed of mere lumbermen and the recklessness of agriculturists generally, 

 little impression has, so far, been made upon the mind of the public. Many 

 years since, in presenting a memorial to the State legislature in connection 

 with the late Sanford Howard, then secretary of the State board of agriculture, 

 we urged that timber belts of a prescribed width, and suitably located for the 

 purpose, whether of natural growth or artificially planted, be exempted from 

 taxation, as an encouragement to practice in this direction. Twenty years of 

 observation since has but strengthened my convictions as to the wisdom of such 

 action. I therefore recommend that the society take efficient measures to 

 bring this subject prominently to the notice of the incoming legislature. 



The codling moth is yearly enlarging his borders and strengthening his 

 stakes among our orchards; and the same is true of the curculio, the apple 

 maggot, the canker worm, and numerous other insidious insect enemies. In 

 our sister State — California — these are regarded as nuisances, by law required 

 to be abated, and the man who breeds them, or allows them to be bred upon 

 his premises, is treated as a public enemy, and punished as such. This may 

 in some sense be regarded as heroic practice; but in what is he who allows 

 codling moths to propagate unchecked in his orchards, to the injury of his 

 neighbors, better than he who in a similar manner disseminates the virus of 

 small-pox or yellow fever? We suggest, therefore, for the consideration of this 

 society, whether in a State such as ours, in which fruit culture is especially 

 prominent, we should not be doing far more than is being done to disseminate 

 information as to the extent of such injuries and the most effective means to 

 remedy and escape them; and whether, in case of such insects as the codling 

 moth, there is not quite as much occasion for legislation as in the case of 

 Canada thistles or other noxious weeds. 



Very naturally and properly, we are anxious that our people as a whole shall 

 rank high in the scale of intelligence and refinement; yet from our practice it 

 would seem doubtful if we properly realize the fact that our status as a people 

 is but the aggregate of those of individuals. Else why is it so commonly the 

 case that the more refined, instead of striving to lift those beneath them in this 

 particular up to their level, are inclined to wrap themselves in the mantle of 

 exclusiveness, leaving others to struggle upward as they may? It is to coun- 

 teract such tendencies and in such matters "to lead the blind in a way which 

 they know not," that such societies as ours should exist. Man is generally but 

 the creation of his surroundings. The child bred amid coarse and vicious sur- 

 roundings usually grows up to be coarse and rowdyish, if not even vicious and 

 criminal ; while refined, virtuous and attractive homes send down the odor of 

 their beauty and their sanctity to the remotest hours of the lives which emanate 

 from them. Nothing about the home and its early associations conduces more 

 strongly to this happy result than do the refinements and adornment derived 



