EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE'S REPORT. 53 



give to any reasonable proposals all the weight of our in- 

 fluence. 



Another matter and one of very great importance is that 

 of publication. We have no desire to benefit merely those 

 who live in and about Winnipeg", and the comparatively small 

 proportion of the flower-lovers in the west who are able to 

 attend our meeting's, and we wish by the publishing* of our 

 papers to extend our usefulness to a much wider area. We 

 have now material on hand for an ordinary sized pamphlet 

 of about forty pages, and the record of this meeting- will very 

 likely make about as much more. We cannot publish this 

 without assistance from the Government, assistance which I 

 am glad to know we are very likely to receive. The larg-e 

 grants bestowed upon the Horticultural Societies elsewhere, 

 makes our request for a hundred dollars seem entirely insig- 

 nificant. If we are able to realize our plans in this direction, 

 our work ought to prove a valuable supplement to the good 

 work which is being" done on the western experimental farms. 



The distribution of plants is a project that ought to en- 

 gage our attention. We made a beginning- last spring- and 

 with added experience hope to do better this year. These 

 plants are an inducement in many cases to bring- in our mem- 

 bers, but what the Society regards as of greater importance, 

 is that some of the classes at least will always mean the in- 

 troduction of new and valuable plants that are sure to do 

 well in this country. 



Perhaps the most important question of all which lies 

 before us in the immediate future is the question of affiliation. 

 The letter from the Minnesota State Society has already been 

 mentioned. The neighboring United States of Minnesota 

 and Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, have much more in 

 common with us from a fruit-growing point of view than any 

 of the provinces of Eastern Canada, where the climate and 

 other conditions are so different, and this proposal of the 

 Minnesota Society, backed up as it is by the paper on the 

 history of that Society, which Mr. Latham has kindly sent, 

 ought certainly to secure the most attentive and favorable 



