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310 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Each tree and shrub has its own peculiar traits, and each may be 
recognized as an old friend of the summertime by its mauner of 
growth or coloring. 
“A year of time! 
What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
What hues wherewith our Northern clime 
Makes autumin’s dropping woodlands gay, 
What airs out blown from ferny dells, 
And clover bloom and sweetbrier smells, 
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers, 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours.”’ 
THE FARMERS’ INSTITUTE AS A METHOD OF TEACH- 
ING THE FARMERS HORTICULTURE. 
(A DISCUSSION. ) 
Mr. Wm. Somerville: Mr. President; For a number of 
years I have been a member of the State Horticultural Society 
—since it first started—,and when we have met together from 
year to year we would talk over our successes, discourage- 
ments and disappointments, but it was always on the inside of 
our own circle, and we never had any method of getting it 
before the farmers of the state, until the farmers’ institute was 
started. Now, the farmers really are the ones that need the 
teaching; they are entitled to it. We get appropriations, state 
appropriations, for our horticultural work, and we get state 
appropriations that the people have to pay for our institute 
work, and it is those who have to pay these appropriations 
that want and ought to know how and when to take care of 
trees, fruits, plants, etc. Those of us who meet together here 
from time to time get some information from each other, but 
the books that are published by the society containing our 
deliberations very rarely get outside of our own organization, 
hence, it is only a small percentage that get the needed 
information. Since the farmers’ institutes have been started 
there has always been some person provided to represent the 
horticultural interest, and I claim that of all interests repre- 
sented in the farmers’ institute, that interest should stand first, 
because farmers know more about feeding their hogs corn and 
feeding the cows on their farms than they do about taking 
care of trees and raising small fruit on the farm. Hence, I 
hold that as fast as there is more teaching on this subject, 
many farmers will become interested in this matter. 
I was with the farmers’ institute for three or four years. 
I found this, that they were anxious to get all the knowledge 
