80 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. C. S. Bartlett: I want to ask of these gentlemen, if they think that 

 in the interior of Michigan, where we are not so protected as along the 

 peach belt, whether it is advisable in the spring of the year or the last of 

 winter, to mulch the trees, with the expectation of holding back the bud. 



Mr. Bramin : It is a very good idea, though I never practiced it on my 

 place; I have noticed that with maples and other trees when I mulched 

 them, it held them back. 



Prof. Taft: So far as the mere blossom is concerned, you can perhaps 

 make a little difference, but not to any extent. As it grows warm, experi- 

 ments show that they will blossom, whether or no. You can certainly 

 make a slight difference, but not enough to pay. 



Q : We are about to set a peach orchard, and we propose if possible, to 

 set it with an old apple orchard. What do you think about it? 



Prof. Taft: I wouldn't do it. 



Mr. Morrill: I would set the apples in one field and the peaches in 

 another. 



The Chairman at this point asked Mrs. Mary A. Mayo to explain the 

 intent of the Woman's Section. 



Mrs. Mayo: Mr. Morrill gives you an idea here; he says your baskets 

 of peaches should be what they appear to be on the top. What is the rea- 

 son they have not been? It is because the men are not honest. I heard one 

 of the professors of the Agricultural College say that when they go to 

 examine the boys who apply for admission to the College, they examine 

 them as to their studies — but he said-, "after those boys have been in the 

 College two weeks, I can take them, one by one, and tell you what kind of 

 a man the father is — whether he is an honest man, a clean man; and I 

 will tell you what kind of a woman the mother is, because that boy is 

 bearing about an exact photograph of the father and the mother and the 

 home." 



Now I tell you that the fathers and the mothers and the homes have 

 not been honest ones, if the majority of the men in the State of Michigan 

 are putting an inferior grade of peaches on the bottom of their baskets, 

 and at this convention that we are to have, we want to talk about how to 

 make these boys, clean, pure boys, and of the girls, strong, staunch 

 women, who in turn shall rear clean, pure men, so that in future meetings 

 you won't have to talk about making the bottom of the basket as good as 

 the top. 



I think the men ought to talk these things over too, because I believe 

 God designed a man for fatherhood as much as he designed a woman for 

 motherhood. They shirk their duties many times, and lay all the blame 

 on the woman's shoulders, and I believe that this subject ought to be 

 discussed by the men as well as the women. 



