76 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



May not our richer sands of Michigan command over $100 per ?cre as well as 

 those of Monmouth? 



You have heard of the city of Vineland. Where is it? In the very center 

 of the South Jersey barrens — yes, barrens, such as we know not in our sand 

 region. What is it? A sort of paradise of fruit and flowers and happy 

 homes made since my ride over a dreary highway of sand barrens which were 

 only three times worse than from here to Grand Elaven. What happened ? 

 The ''green sand" and green manure have been "life from the dead," and 

 have robed that land in beauty and richness. 



About that time I was wont to visit the central portions of Long Island 

 and had relatives near the Hempstead plains. These were a "common" of 

 scarcely any market value, and squatters were allowed to inclose and culti- 

 vate land for their own use if they only had meatis and patience to exchange 

 toil for hope. A cousin was one of those squatters. His son lives there to- 

 day on a finely cultivated farm, and close by, upon that once rejected com- 

 mon, is Garden City. But wnat was here the transforming power? Fish — 

 simply fish. Tons upon tons of finny fertilizers were carted to the fields, 

 and soon other tons of city refuse were supplemented and aided the com- 

 pensating crops. You may go to Long Island and buy plenty of that old 

 "good for nothing sand" at $300 per acre. 



Before the war I was living in the sea island cotton region of South Caro- 

 lina, the region along the coast from Edisto island to Savannah. Common 

 upland cotton was 8 to 12 cents per pound, but thib fine variety bore treble 

 value in the market. The soil was light, and poor enough, and without 

 manure eight or ten bushels of corn per acre would be a full crop. The 

 coast is interlocked with salt flats and lagoons, and this salty mud, mixed 

 perhaps with pine needles and crushed cotton seed, would be placed in the 

 bottom of the trenches and fed the plant which made cotton king. Surely 

 there is something to put a crown more potent on our realms of sand. 



Fifty years ago the Coxsakie flats region in Greene county, N. Y., was a 

 celebrated producer of hay. The rich clay bottom was deemed a gold mine 

 and the adjoining sand farms were but a term of reproach. But this thing 

 could not last. Some thirty years ago manufactured manures began to be 

 used, and soon it was fonnd that what seemed to be wasted on the flats was a 

 valuable boon upon those reprobate sands — the one decreased and the other 

 increased until the latter gained a double value over their old hay rivals. 



Yes, it may not take fifty years for these Holland sands to laugh to scorn 

 the now boastful meadows of Graafschap or Friesland. 



This is enough to indicate my belief and reasons for it. This sand in 

 Michigan has a good deal in it; no doubt about that. The problem is to 

 bring its virtues out. I trust you wdl be able to find some way of doing this 

 with eminent success. Surely there is a way, just as in the places I have 

 named, a mode of fertilization; but in the first place not by barn-yard 

 manure. This follows after some foundation is laid in the soil ; and I con- 

 clude by declaring myself a firm believer in the capabilities of this west 

 Michigan which a gazetteer of 1820 pronounced "unfit for settlement or 

 cultivation," 



A. S. Kedzie read a paper on " Marketing Fruits," reviewing the com- 

 mission system, and on the whole condemning it; contending that canneries 

 afford only local relief, and advocating establishment of some such system 

 as that of the California fruit union. 



