ANNUAL MEETING AT LEXINGTON 217 



too much to say that every successful effort on the part of horticul- 

 turists to improve, from their stand point, the homes and surrorndings 

 of our citizens vdll do more to suppress crime than twice the same 

 effort put forth by the police powers of the State. No one questions 

 the duty of the State to do all it can to restrain criminals. Does any- 

 one question the duty of that same power to do what it can to prevent 

 the making of them ? And that it is her duty to do this by the most 

 efficient means ? 



Our State Superintendent of Public Schools is made ex officio 

 member of the State Board of Agriculture. Should he not also be 

 recognized by the law of the State as ex officio member of the State 

 Horticultural Society ? And with the position as member of the two 

 bodies ought not there be duties to perform and means provided for 

 their performance? How much of the educational advantages of the 

 State are for the benefit of the children of farmers as such, that is to 

 fit them especially for the business of farming, that which the great 

 proportion of them will follow in after life i The decided tendencies 

 of our educational system is to fit the youth of the land, including 

 farmer's children, for some other business than farming, to educate 

 them away from the farm. This, the great foundation industry of the 

 world, is left to gain its recruits from these who are forced by circum- 

 stances to follow the calling. Nothing is done by the State to put the 

 children of the common country schools in possession of the multitude 

 of wonderful facts that make up the science of agriculture ; such facts 

 as relate to insect, plant and animal life, character of soils and pro- 

 cesses of fertilization and exhaustion, farm economies and a thousand 

 other things which, when the mind has become interested in them, 

 prove more interesting and instructive than can be found anywhere 

 else in the relm of nature, and w4iich, if they were in possession of the 

 farmers of our State, it would be worth a hundred fold more than it 

 would cost to impart them. 



Why cannot our State Board of Agriculture devise a plan by 

 which it, in connection with the School Superintendent, can cause such 

 information to be taught in our-schools ? Why cannot the Horticul- 

 tural Society also work with the school authorities and inaugurate 

 methods of teaching which will not only be of inestimable service to 

 the State from an economic standpoint, but also be the means of ele- 

 vating and refining all our people? Suppose the Society had at its 

 command funds with which it could employ a qualified landscape gard- 

 ener and horticulturist to visit our schools and impart to the teachers 

 as well as pupils, the elements of the art of beautifying their school 



