52 ANNUAL REPORT. 



motion of Peter M. Gideon, it was voted to make Mr. Plumb an 

 honorary life member of this society in consideration of his long 

 and useful service in western horticulture. 



Mr. Plumb thanked the society for the honor conferred on him 

 and pledged his hearty co-operation with us in our work here- 

 after. 



Prof. Porter on behalf of the Board of Regents extended a wel- 

 come to the members of the society to the buildings and grounds 

 of the University, and especially invited them to visit the work- 

 shops and see the students in mechanics at their employments 

 therein. 



The Secretary's and Treasurer's annual reports were then read, 

 as follows, and referred to the Financial Committee : 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



Mr. President and Members of the State Horticultural Society: 



The year now closing has been a busy one for the Secretary and 

 an eventful one for the society. 



OUR ANNUAL REPORT. 



At the close of our last annual meeting we found ourselves in 

 possession of material for an annual report that might rank in size 

 and contents with the best horticultural reports of other Western 

 States, but hampered with a printing law that while professedly 

 allowing us a volume of 300 pages — 1,000 copies in cloth and 4,000 

 in paper covers — was yet so worded and so restricted as to cost as 

 to make it entirely uncertain what it would be, and place it out of 

 .our power to prepare it intelligently for the press. As an illustra- 

 tion of its workings, the previous year we were directed to cut 

 down our carefully prepared manuscript, which was done ; then 

 the State printer gave us another cut by introducing a lot of fine 

 type, so, as he said, that it might be reduced to 300 pages, or 

 get within the limit as to cost ; and when the report finally came 

 out, it contained only 135 pages, and the fine type made it al- 

 most unreadable. The difficulty lay in the limit of $750 in-tead 

 of having the limit solely on the size of the volume and the num- 

 ber of copies, leaving the cost to be governed by the printer's con- 

 tract with the state for the printing and binding of that amount 

 of matter ; and as it was operating so badly with us, being a dis- 



