158 STATE HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



The society may, and probably ought (as it has heretofore done) to offer 

 inducements for the preservation and planting of screens and wind-breaks; 

 but its capacity to reach and abate the evil is too vastly disproportioned to the 

 object. This evil is of a magnitude demanding extensive concert of action, 

 and the joint and earnest cooperation of the federal as well as the State gov- 

 ernment. To the question "How best to secure such action?" we invite the 

 earnest and thoughtful attention of the society. The last legislature, in its 

 amendment of the highway law of the State, to provide for the planting and 

 protection of shade trees along the highways, has taken an important step in a 

 right direction. We suggest a careful study of such law as amended with ref- 

 erence to its possible improvement or amplification ; and we further suggest 

 the desirability and sound policy of exempting from taxation such grounds as 

 shall be either reserved in clearing, or artificially planted, as wind-breaks; and 

 that the society take into consideration the propriety of memorializing the legis- 

 lature on the subject. 



The society has now, for nearly or quite two years, been engaged in the ef- 

 fort to extend its influence beyond the few principal points to and about which 

 its operations had previously been largely confined. At the late meeting of the 

 society, at Allegan, it was stated that, in the face of the fact that there is 

 often a large attendance at its meetings, it was, practically, almost without 

 actual paid annual memberships, and that it was, in .fact, mainly sustained, 

 and its expenses paid, by the voluntary and unpaid efforts of its officers and a 

 few interested and public-spirited friends; while its annual report, distributed 

 without even the form of recompense, had, to a very considerable extent, come 

 to be an apparent means of preventing the purchase of memberships, since it 

 supplied nearly or quite all the information to be gained by attendance upon 

 the sessions of the society without even the effort and expense necessary to such 

 attendance. Soon after the Allegan meeting, at which a committee had been 

 charged with the duty of the much needed revision of the constitution, upon 

 the suggestion of one of the most considerate, careful, and earnest of our 

 members — Hon. W. K. Gibson, of Jackson, — the plan now in operation for 

 increasing our membership, by the organization of local societies as auxiliaries, 

 was adopted, and became part of our revised constitution. The work of or- 

 ganization was given into the hands of Secretary Garfield, whose efforts up to 

 the present time have secured the organization of nineteen auxiliaries, widely 

 distributed over the southern portion of the lower peninsula, with a total of 

 about one thousand members, including those of the parent society, each mem- 

 ber of an auxiliary society being also a member of the parent society. This 

 process is doing very much to increase and disseminate the influence of the 

 society in heretofore unoccupied sections, and has begotten an earnest desire 

 that such efforts may be still farther continued, and the beneficial influences 

 of the society come to be still more widely felt. 



One of the incidental and yet important uses to be made of these auxiliaries 

 is, and is to be, the employing them as aids in the work of collecting such 

 facts or other information as may, from time to time, become needful for the 

 advancement of the purposes it may have in hand ; also, as aids in the mis- 

 sionary work of disseminating such matter as it may have reason to employ in 

 the advancement of the interests of horticulture among the people. Their in- 

 strumentality will doubtless also be sought in providing for the holding of 

 its meetings, and for the dissemination of notices thereof. 



The society had also come to fear that, with the existing broadcast system 

 of distributing its annual reports, there might be danger that it would be 



