16 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Question iVo. 5. How shall I preserve fruit trees from mice? 



Mr. Lannin : Keep your ground perfectly clean and there will be no danger. 



S. M. Pearsall, Grand Rapids : For years I practiced mounding the earth about 

 my trees until they were quite large, and found this a successful method of out- 

 witting tlie mice. 



H. G. Reynolds, Old Mission : Neither of these methods is practicable with 

 us. We do not consider it safe to keep the ground clean, and mounds a foot 

 high would avail nothing with our depth of snow. My practice has been to let 

 the mice do what damage they saw fit, which has been very little, and early in 

 spring cover the wounds with liquid grafting wax. 



Mr. Steele, LaPorte, Ind. : I use tar paper. 



Mr. Reynolds : This will do very nicely with a few trees in a garden, but 

 Avhen you come to put tar paper over a hundred acres of orcharding it will be 

 found a costly business. 



Meeting adjourned until Wednesday morning, 9 o'clock. 



Wednesday Morning Session. 

 The first topic of the morning was 



THE UTILITY OF HIGHWAY TREE PLANTING. 



Upon which Mr. Henry G. Reynolds, of Old Mission, remarked : 



Not the least valuable among the labors of the legislature during the session 

 just drawing to its close, is a modification of our highway laws, which will 

 within a few years go far toward making every country road throughout the 

 State a delight to the eyes, a pleasure to the weary traveler, a source of pride 

 to every citizen. Truly a large promise, but it seems to me fully warranted. 



This modification of the laws is of two parts, by the first of whicli our former 

 law relative to cattle at large has been made an active reality which can only be 

 locally annulled by special action of the board of supervisors, instead of being, 

 as heretofore, a dead letter unless especially rendered operative by such board. 

 Henceforth our lands are to be condemned for public use only as common high- 

 way, not as common pig yard or cattle pen, unless we locally decide to make it 

 such. 



This measure by whicli our highways will be cleared of all animals not under 

 control, prepares the way for the second step, viz., the gradual planting on each 

 side of every highway of a row of trees to be from eight to ten feet from the 

 fence, and as near as may be, sixty feet from tree to tree. This will, within a 

 score of years, line every public road in the State with handsome trees, and make 

 Michigan well worth traveling far to see. 



There was some opposition to the passage of this law, based upon the idea 

 that large trees along the roadside exert an unfavorable influence upon the 

 road-bed by preventing the drying effect of sun and wind, and thus keeping the 

 road muddy and ensuring deep ruts. If such were to be the result of the law, 

 it certainly was a blunder ; and as pictures of mud and deep ruts rise before 

 imagination it is true that witii them are generally associated the deep shade of 

 the forest. Is this, then, what we are coming to? No! emphatically not. 

 Who of us in this part of the State cannot call to mind long stretches of road 

 buried in the deepest forest, where the track is always good. Between Lansing 

 and Owosso, a distance of twenty-five miles, the only uniformly good stretch of 

 road is a distance of two miles through dense forest. On the light soils of a 



