No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 517 



the relation of bees to horticulture and another on the value of honey 

 as food, besides ordering the preparation of press notices to every 

 paper in the United States. 



A number of years ago Pennsylvania was not known among the 

 fruit states, and only within recent years was it discovered that 

 choice fruit, equal to that of any progressive district of the United 

 States, can be produced here. We have only recently awakened to 

 the possibilities of our State. When we consider that only a few 

 colonies of bees covering in flight a radius of a few miles can store 

 a ton of honey, and when we see acres upon acres of land not winged 

 by bees, we realize that there must be millions of nectar-secreting 

 flowers that remain unvisited by them, and there must be tons of 

 honey wasted upon the desert air. 



If the soil is uncultivated, there still remains in it a latent power 

 that some wanderer may find cejituries later; if the mineral in the 

 earth remains unearthed, it loses none of its virtue or value. But 

 here is a product, formed daily, that may satisfy the desire of a 

 peasant or grace the menu of a king, that "if the harvest is ready 

 and the laborers are few" or none, it is lost forever. 



KEPOKT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATION 



The Committee on Legislation beg leave to make the following 

 Eeport : 



This being a year when the Legislature is not in session, the 

 Committee on Legislation have somewhat abbreviated their Iteport, 

 reviewing the demands for the past rather than claiming new laws 

 to be passed, from any new claims made by the present State Board 

 of Agriculture. 



The farmers of Pennsylvania have long been united in sentiment, 

 however, short in action upon tho proposition, that the roads to which 

 the State owes its greatest obligation are those thousands of miles of 

 township roads which the farmer must traverse in carrying his crops 

 to market. We look upon this proposition as important, economic- 

 ally, to the city man as well as the farmer. We, therefore, review 

 our stand for a law which will pay to townships, by the State, fifty 

 per centum of all road taxes collected in said townships not, how- 

 ever, to exceed |20 a mile. Such a law has twice i)assed our Legis- 

 lature only to be made inoperative by executive disai)proval. We 

 regret that our last Legislature failed to appropriate sufficient money 

 to meet the obligation assumed by the State, when it passed the 

 Jones' Road Bill in 1909. We urge all farmers to insist that they 

 use their votes and influence with the view of securing sufficient ap- 

 propriations by our next Legislature to meet the deficiencies created 

 in every township in Pennsylvania. 



