WINTER MEETING, 18S1 3 



growing. I have a deep interest in the development of the local horticultural 

 societies, and balieve that the handling of the reports may most properly con- 

 stitute a portion of their work. In Berrien wo have a thriving association, and 

 we know who need the volumes better than awy one outside the county, and I 

 can guarantee that the volumes sent us will be used judiciously. 



Mr. Wyckoff, Oakland county: For two years boxes of reports have been 

 sent me for distribution, and I think our people value them more than any 

 Yolumes they get, and it seems to me we are nearing the time when perhaps we 

 may form a local organization which can and will take charge of the distribu- 

 tion for our county. Certainly in Oakland, where so much fruit is grown, we 

 should and can support a live horticultural society. 



Mr. Pearsall, Grand Rapids : The trouble is, people do not understand this 

 business; they draw false conclusions. It is in tlie interests of Michigan 

 horticulture that our society exists, and every branch that is so formed 

 strengthens the whole work, and every man who supports either the parent 

 society or an auxiliary helps to build up the valuable reports which come back 

 to him and requite him liberally for his investment. Our people, now that 

 they understand it, are well pleased with the new syston of distribution and 

 the plan of forming auxiliary societies. 



President Lyon: There is probably no single State in the Union, if we 

 except possibly California, in which horticulture, including all its branches, 

 from the growing of fruics and flowers to the cultivation of trees and plants, 

 ■whether for ornament or utility, flnds so congenial and favorable a field as in 

 Michigan, especially in the lower peninsula. We are led to suppose that it 

 may have been in consideration of this fact, and possibly in view of the 

 further and obvious fact that its demonstration must necessarily involve the 

 conclusion that the same causes operating together to such result are equally 

 effective in favor of agricultural pursuits generally, that the Legislature was 

 induced, in providing for the organization of a State Pomological Society, to 

 provide also for the publication of its transactions, as one of tlie most effect- 

 ive means of publishing to the people of the State and to the world, the 

 special capacities of our soils and climate for such purposes; and thus foster- 

 ing and developing these pursuits among our own citizens; while at the same 

 time the attention of horticulturists abroad, (who are notoriously a reading 

 and thinking class of people), would be strongly drawn to our State, and thus 

 the immigration of a most thrifty and desirable class of persons be encouraged. 



Previous legislation in providing for the publication of the transactions of 

 agricultural societies had not only assumed the labor and expense of their 

 preparation and publication, but had also assumed the expense and resi)osibil- 

 ity of their distribution by retaining the whole matter in the hands of its paid 

 officials. In providing for the publication of the transactions of the State 

 Pomological Society, however, tlie expense of collecting and arranging the 

 matter therefor, and the labor of editing the same, is left to be supplied by 

 the society, while the volumes committed to its charge are required to be 

 distributed at the expense of the Society under more or less specific provisions, 

 which leaves the process very considerably at its discretion. 



The present officers of the society, upon assuming charge of the affairs, found 

 it to be the practice of annually sending out packages of Transactions to large 

 numbers of more or less prominent citizens, many, if not most, of whom had 

 no ostensible connection with fruit culture, and who received the same without 

 pledge for their proper use, in nearly every case omitting to return any state- 



