ANNUAL WINTER MEETING. 69 



until you have read their letters as I have done. I noticed it 

 even in my own little town when I gave them a donation two 

 years ago, and I had no idea when I made them the offer, that 

 if they would come to my place the next day I would give them 

 some raspberries, that there would be more than a dozen there; 

 but the next morning at seven o'clock I found a dozen or two 

 waiting for me, and all day long they kept me busy doing up 

 little packages of red and black raspberries. All that summer 

 children waited for me to tell me about those plants, and how 

 they watered them every day, and still they died. (Laughter. 

 Or else they hoed them every day, or the bugs eat the tops off 

 — they told me every detail about them. It has made those 

 children very friendly to me, so much so that I am well paid 

 for my little donation by the look of gratefulness and interest 

 on their faces when I meet them. The idea of sending out 

 those plants with instructions showing how they should be 

 cared for, and the business of writing for them, and all those 

 things — I tell you it pays one a hundred times for all the 

 trouble. 



I would suggest, if you have a state school superin- 

 tendent, if he will allow you to embody this circular in his 

 Arbor Day circular, it will be of vast assistance to you, and 

 there is one point you want to work for — to have the state do 

 this distributing. Have this bound with the Arbor Day cir- 

 cular, and the state then distributes them to every district, 

 and thus you will reach every school district. You will find 

 that this plan of sending out these plants will furnish consider- 

 able work for your corresponding secretary, as the reports are 

 generally made to him. I think if you will follow the plan out 

 you will do more to advance the cause of horticulture in this 

 state in the next ten years than you could do with ten times 

 the same amount of work in any other direction. It will reach 

 families that you can reach in no other way. 



Pew of you, unless you have taken the pains to ascer- 

 tain the condition of the farmers, know to what extent 

 they neglect the fruits and flowers. Why, our society 

 three years ago sent out five or six hundred circulars 

 to different parts of our state asking certain questions. 

 Among those questions was this one: "What proportion 

 of farmers in your vicinity raise fruit and flowers of the 

 varieties ordinarily grown?" These letters came back with re- 

 plies like this: "Not one in one hundred;" "Not one within five 

 miles of here;" "Not one in fifty;" and I think there were only 



