DIGEST OF STATE REPOETS. 483 



president of the societj', articles on grafting, grai^e-culture, wiue-niakiug, 

 proiits of fruit-culture, snout-beetles injurious to fruits, report of the 

 delegates to the meeting of the American Pomological Society, reports 

 and essays fi'om county societies, the climate, soil, and meteorology of 

 Michigan, &c.. 



The second annual fair of the society vras very successful. The at- 

 tendance was large, and the display of fruits very encouraging and satis- 

 factory. There were six hundred and four entries. Wayne County was 

 awarded the first and Kent the second liremium. The former exhibited 

 one hundred and fifty-eight varieties of apples, twenty-seven varieties 

 of native and fifteen of foreign grapes, besides some other varieties of 

 fruit, such as peaches, pears, quinces, &c. Kent County exhibited one 

 hundred and twenty-five varieties of apples, sixteen of pears, fourteen 

 of peaches, a fine collection of canned fruits, and some large specimens 

 of Black Hamburg and White Fontaiuebleau (foreign) grapes, raised 

 in the city of Grand Rapids. Of foreign fruits California contributed the 

 following named varieties: seventeen varieties of grapes, am^ng them 

 specimens of the Muscat; a single cluster of Flann Tokay, weighing four 

 pounds ; twenty-six varieties of apples, which included Ehode Island 

 Greenings, 14 inches in circumference ; Fall Pippins, 13^~ inches ; Yellow 

 Belleflowers, 12 inches ; English liussets, 10 inches ; Baldwins, 13 inches ; 

 Eambos, 13 inches. There were also seven varieties of pears from this 

 State, some of them weighing as high as one pound and measuring 12 

 inches in circumference. 



The president of the society, Mr., J. P. Thompson, in his address, 

 urges the importance of a more diversified system of agriculture on the 

 part of the people of this State. Twenty-one years ago, when he first 

 .became acquainted with the heavy-timbered lands of, wheat-growing 

 Michigan, that grain was selling in the interior towns at 75 cents per 

 bushel ; in 1852 it brought 90 cents ; in. 1853, $1.25, and in 1851 it re- 

 ceded to 80 cents ; in 185S it reached $1, and in 18G1 it went up to $1.10. 

 During the war it ruled at somewhat higher rates, but the average nor- 

 mal price of wheat for the last twenty years has not been over 61 i)er 

 bushel. At this rate, if wheat-growing was the only branch of western 

 husbandry, the country would soon be poverty-stricken. The speaker 

 contends that Michigan cannot long compete with California and the 

 great wheat-growing country now developing west of the Mississippi 

 and north of the Missouri Eivers, and says there is an absolute and im- 

 perative necessity for the organization of new industries. He says : 



The old agriculture of Michigau, to save itself from ruin, must turu to new sources 

 of -wealth ; must seek uew brauches of husbandry ; must learu lessons of political 

 ecouomy from her more immediate and older neighbors, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 

 The State of New York relinquished wheat-growing because she found it profitable 

 and necessary to do so. The productions of butter and cheese, the dairy products of 

 that great State, have greatly grown in importance. There has been the same change 

 in Ohio. Illinois and Indiana are the successful producers of stock, and the history of 

 Michigan for the last year shows that the production of wool, and thces;port of beef 

 and pork now going on, and the iiroduct of her dairies, have brought more money to 

 her farmers than her wheat crops, valuable though they have been. It is this diversi- 

 fied husbandry, which will prove her wealth and salvation, that we wish to encourage; 

 and as a permanent industry, a perpetual source of revenue, wo take an interest iu 

 fruit-culture. * * * There ai'e many things to encourage the fruit-culturists of 

 Michigan, but chiefly I wish to note her market facilities. A State surrounded with 

 lake ports and harbors, she offers peculiar advantages for the shipment of fruit. 

 Across her borders there will soon be five gigantic trunk-lines of railroad, counectmg 

 the east and west lakes, and traversing the finest fruit sections of the State. Very 

 soon each and all of her lake towns wiU be connected with the great centers of western 

 trade by regular daily lines of steam craft, especially adapted to the transportation of 

 fruit, which can be best carried on the water. For all time to come, Chicago will get 

 a supply of fruit from. Saint Joseph and Grand Haven. 



