18 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Secretary Garfield : It is urged that farmers catuiot afford to have trees 

 planted along their farms. It is such a draft upon the soil. 



Mr. Mann : As to that a farmer can afford it a great deal better than he 

 can afford the foolish expenditure of money in a hundred ways that I might 

 mention. The trees are a luxury and when a man gets fairly settled in his 

 home he cannot afford to do without them. I am now speaking of a man as a 

 farm owner rather than as a payer of road taxes. 



Alvin Chapman, Bangor: There is no doubt but that there is a great draft 

 upon the soil. Two acres are about wasted for every half-mile of road lined 

 with trees. We might as well look the matter squarely in the face. Can a 

 man with a mortgage upon his farm for half it is worth afford to lose this 

 amount of land? 



Mr. Steele : I have never seen very disastrous results from trees planted 

 along the west side of a farm, 



Mr. Irwin, Buchanan; I am satisfied it makes little difference which side 

 of the field the trees are ; wherever their roots extend crops will be enfeebled. 



President Lyon : It must be remembered that the utility of the highway 

 planting has been entirely left out of the latter part of the discussion. The 

 roots of these trees damage crops only as far as they make draft upon the soil ; 

 the tops of these same trees are protecting the entire fields. 



Mr. Lannin : Well, I am willing to place it entirely upon the other basis of 

 ornament. Half the money we get we spend in one way or another on the 

 beautiful, and three-quarters of the comfort we get in life comes from the 

 enjoyment of the beautiful. We always expect to pay for it and we should be 

 willing to sacrifice the little laud for the sake of having our highways so lined 

 with trees as to make our country attractive — a country of which we can feel 

 proud and in which we can get wholesome satisfaction by living in it. I am 

 willing to plant the trees and suffer the consequences. As to the trees by their 

 shade injuring the road-bed, there is nothing in it as far as highway planting is 

 concerned. 



Mr. Tate : I am very glad that in this discussion most of the horticultur- 

 ists are on the side of highway planting. Tliere is nothing we can do for our 

 country with so little outlay tlaat will return as much. 



The next topic taken up was 



LESSOXS FROM THE WINTER OF 1S80-S1. 



The discussion was opened by a paper from the pen of Mr. S. B. Peck, of 

 Muskegon, which is given in full : 



On receiving a request from Secretary Garfield that in case I could not attend 

 this meeting I would prepare an article to be read here on the lessons of the 

 past winter, I replied per postal that, on that head I could not say much, as I 

 had seen little or no difference between the effects of the past winter and its 

 two predecessors, so far as pomology was concerned. I soon learned, however, 

 that in this remark I was a little hasty, having examined only my own premi- 

 ses ; and that whereas in the two past seasons every healthy peach tree through- 

 out this region bore fruit in abundance, the prospect now is that they will only 

 bear this season in favorable locations. Herein consists, in my estimation, one 

 of the great, even the greatest, possible lesson in peach culture. The present 

 season shows" most unmistakably that to insure any degree of success for any 

 term of years, with tender fruits such as peaches and grapes, they must be 

 planted on favorable locations. This fact being admitted, the question then 



