230 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



use. Crops are sprayed, to protect them from insects and 

 fungous pests, with system and exactness, and close records 

 made of the results. New insecticides are carefully tested, 

 and results compared with those of standard formulas. New 

 packages for the keeping and shipping of fruit are being 

 tested, and many other investigations in new lines are being 

 prosecuted, which will be of great benefit to horticultural 

 interests in the future. The patient labor, the watching and 

 waiting required in this department to secure the desired 

 results, in the efforts which may mean a thousand failures to 

 one success, can be readily understood, when we remember 

 how many wild and worthless apples were grown before our 

 best varieties attained their present excellence. The same 

 is true of all fruit, flower, vegetable, plant and tree growth. 

 Taken together, there are very many failures to one success. 

 We can count on our fingers the really desirable varieties 

 of strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, plums, 

 peaches, pears and apples there are in the markets of to-day. 

 The same fact is apparent in every department of life, getting 

 the best at infinite expense and labor ; yet who would leave 

 the new and accept the old, even at its minimum cost ? 



Future Work and Support. 



The matter of restoring depleted forests, of renewing 

 exhausted soils, of a more prompt and efficient mail service, 

 of better and quicker facilities from farm to market and from 

 market to farm, of better roads and improved highways, how 

 to meet western competition in products and prices, of en- 

 hancing the social and pecuniary condition of farming com- 

 munities, are problems which must be met and demonstrated 

 in the near future for New Eno-land farming communities and 

 interests. Men must be trained to lead the work in various 

 callings, as the times and changed conditions demand. 



We believe the people of Massachusetts as a whole, and 

 by their constitutional organizations, should give not only a 

 liberal but an enthusiastic support to this institution, which 

 is closely in touch with her sanitary, commercial, social and 

 educational interests. 



The college, with its manifest advantages, in our judgment 

 needs a more thorough and aggressive system of advertising 



