REPORT OF THE CO^IMITTEE ON VEGETABLES 

 FOR THE YEAR 1905. 



BY WARREN W. RAWSON, CHAIRMAN. 



Your committee has been greatly pleased and encouraged the 

 past season by the renewal of interest that has been shown in the 

 vegetable department, thereby raising the exhibitions to a much 

 higher standard than in former years. The reduction in the amount 

 appropriated for premiums some two or three years ago was a 

 very discouraging feature and it has been hard to overcome it, 

 but, bv the earnest effort of vour committee and by the encourage- 

 ment for the future that we now have, we think this department 

 will advance to be what it has never been before, one of the leading 

 ones of this Society. 



The object of the Society is to advance horticulture, agriculture, 

 and floriculture in the State of ^lassachusetts. It is not to try 

 to advance more in one department than in another nor to show 

 any more favors to one than to another, but to try to advance them 

 all by making such appropriations for premiums as will in every 

 case help to obtain the desired result. 



The agriculture of Massachusetts has increased nearly 50 per 

 cent in the last fifteen years due largely to the great advancement 

 that has been made in the vegetable or market gardening depart- 

 ment. When Massachusetts stands at the head in the amount 

 of production of vegetables per acre of all the states in the Union 

 and also for the best quality produced, why should not the exhibits 

 at our exhibitions be up to the standard, and why should not this 

 Society share in the advance that has been made in this direction ? 

 When the vegetable products of the state equal more in value than 

 her fruits, plants and flowers combined why is not this department 

 worthy of the first and best consideration, especially when we con- 

 sider that by far the greater part of the vegetables produced in the 

 state are grown in the vicinity of Boston ? 



