about the possibilities of the country. I went across the plains. I did not know just how much gold I might be able to get; did not know whether I would come back with one barrel full or ten, but I believed there was a great deal there, or hoped there was, and it was my dream all the time in crossing the plains, that if I succeeded I would come back and have this education I had hungered for all this time; I would go to college. I stayed there about three years, and my success was somewhat limited. When

I came back, I had a little money with which I might start in life, but I had not enough to give me the education which I desired, and so I was compelled to abandon that dream again. I engaged in farming, and I invested what little money I had brought home. I came back just at the close of the hard times, a few years ago; cannot remember the date. I invested, and went to farming, and was very successful in my investment. I married, and had two children; and after three years of farm life I sold out, and found myself in easy circumstances. Then the feeling came back, that I must have an education. It was a hunger within me; it burned there. I started to go to a little select school which had been started up in the neighborhood, when I sold the farm. I bought some books, and found I had not the preparation I needed to make those books profitable to me, so I went to school two months. It was a kind of a disease on me. I felt that I must have an education. I was acting as justice of the peace at the time, and was called upon considerably to render services in that capacity, and I refused, while I was going to school, to attend to any business of the kind; was threatened with prosecution, but I would not bother with it. I was bound to get the education.

At the end of two months, I left school; I had something better in my mind, and I went to Ann Arbor without letting any body know, and I spent a week around that institution looking at the facilities presented there, and quietly made arrangements so that when I came back I did not go to that school any more, but I went to Ann Arbor and took a five years' course in the university graduated there. I was now over thirty years old, and I saw college life clearly, not from the position of a boy, but

from that of a man. I saw the inside and the outside of it. There were students there among them, young men with wealthy parents, who sent their children to school. Such boys never made proficiency. They never spent their time profitably; but when a boy came to school because he wanted to come, and had it in him to learn, if that boy could get help from his parents, it would do him good, and such boys are to-day honored men, and occupy many honorable positions in life.

Mr. Field-What proportion do you think would have made proficient scholars if they had been furnished with money?

Mr. Wood-I should think about half, not more than that.

I am not satisfied with this feeling that is so prominent in this convention that everything we do must be done from a money standpoint. There is a radical error in that, and when we talk to our boys, we talk as though success in life meant simply the gathering together of money; as this friend said here, if he could get two thousand dollars a year, he would leave his farm.

Now when I got through with this, the world was open to me. I had many opportunities where I could have taken salaries, but my hunger for farming came back to me. I studied it very deliberately; I thought of it on all sides. Now, I want to call your attention to some things which led me back to the farm. I noticed that salaried men were always dependent for their success upon the good will of others; that they could not be independent; that it was popularity that they must possess, and that it was favor they most needed in oruer that they might hold their salaries; that without a moment's warning, just because some little prejudice was taken against them, they were liable to lose their positions; and unfitted as they were for the toils and duties of life, be cast out and made to depend upon themselves. I could by no means accept such a position as that. I must have something where I could be my own master; where if I believed anything, I could speak it, and where nobody could interfere with me. And so I went to the farm, the most independent spot on the earth. God makes his rain and his sunshine to fall on the harvest, and there is no influence big enough to get between us and God's sunshine and his rain, and all this talk that we have about

making money, and teaching our children that nothing is a success that does not gather in money, just makes me think that we are a company, who, like Bunyan's men, are digging in the earth and getting more money. Now, why shall we not teach our children that there are better things and a nobler life, and that manhood is worth more to them than money?

Mr. Stickney-It is true that we are in a very bad fix in this matter of losing all our boys, and yet, when we get into trouble, we can sometimes gather a crumb of comfort by comparing our condition with the condition of others. Now while this fact exists, that all our bright boys hurry off to the city and take the good positions of influence and honor and trust in business, let us stop a moment, and think of what becomes of the city boys. Where do they go to? Are we willing to change places with the city parents to-day, and take the chances of their boys? Come to think of it, we are not so very bad off, or worse off than anybody else, after all.

One other thought. While it is an undisputed fact that the average farms of this state, yes, I may say the best of the farms, have not had half their resources developed, ought it to be so very hard to make money on them, and to obtain all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life? I think not. I think that while there is so much in all of our farms that is still undeveloped resources, lying latent, but costing us money for taxes, there should be a way found to utilize those resources, and bring them out, and make it easy to prosper on the farm, as easy as in any other calling.

One other thought, and I am done. Have we all thought of taking into consideration that education - that is, outside of schools and outside of books, on the farm, that which can be brought to bear by every father upon his son, the influences that can be thrown around every family, and the interest in the business of that family - is always in our reach, and in nine cases out of ten is utterly ignored or forgotten. If we have not thought of that, let us think of it now, and do what we can to put it in force.

A paper was then read by J. W. Wood, of Baraboo, on the

USE OF POISON IN HORTICULTURE.

A member-I would like to ask Mr. Wood just how he manages to poison wood-chucks.

Mr. Wood-As I intimated, I put strychnine into squash seed. Wood-chucks are very partial to squash vines and squash seeds, and that is about the only way I have been able to reach them. I have soaked the squash seed, but if you don't do that you can raise the side of it and put the strychnine in.

THE QUESTION BOX.

For the purpose of giving an opportunity for discussing subjects not embraced in the regular programme, a box was provided for the reception of questions.

General Bryant, the secretary, upon opening the box said this was a new thing in our conventions. It had been practiced in Massachusetts, and as he was born in the heart of the commonwealth, he must be excused for patterning after the state that burned witches and tunnelled the Hoosick mountains. He then read the first question as follows:

What will prevent fire blight?

Mr. Jordan - The prevention of fire blight is a subject that has occupied a good deal of my attention and study, and possibly the results of my experience and practice may be of some benefit to those here who have been troubled with the blight more or less. I commenced whitewashing my trees some eight years ago with lime and soft soap or lye, for the purpose of making my trees more healthy and keeping the borers out. While practicing this my trees blighted the same as did those of all my neighbors. Two years ago I saw that sulphur was recommended to be used in whitewashing trees to prevent the blight. I slacked my lime as usual, and was very careful to slack it in such a way that it would remain on the bodies of the trees. While it is slacking, I put in about a fifth part of sulphur, and thus make a paint; make it about the consistency of thick paint. Then I wash the trees thoroughly, letting the mixture run in around the

cracks next the ground and up well into the limbs, filling the crotch full. I have practiced this for two summers. There are some gentlemen here who visited my place during the last year, who will bear me witness that through our section of the country there is not, with the exception of my place, a garden or an or. chard that has two Transcendent trees but what they have suffered with the blight, while I have one hundred acres under orchard and not a Transcendent has blighted in two years past. A year ago this last summer I did not have a twig of any kind blighted. This last season I had a little blight commence in one corner where my man in slacking the lime, contrary to orders, had burned the lime and it had washed off the trees early. I then had a sprinkler prepared, a duster rather, about the size of a gallon can, perforated on one side. I filled this with powdered lime and sulphur, and while the dew was on or right after a rain storm, I dusted those trees that had commenced to blight, and the blight then stopped and did not spread over the balance of my orchard. I have read a great deal on this subject. Mr. Purdy, of Elmira, New York, says in his Recorder, that the blight can be controlled with such positive certainty that it is only an evidence of shiftlessness for a man to allow his pear trees to blight, so I think that will apply to us who are trying to raise fruit trees. By and by, when we are passing a man's orchard and see his trees blighted, we shall consider it as great an evidence of carelessness as when we see his fences down.

Another man in the Fruit Recorder, says he has a specific for tree blight. He uses copperas water thickened with lime or sulphur. If he thickens with sulphur, the result may be the same, but he don't question but that copperas itself may be a disinfectant. Scientific men believe that blight is a fungus disease, possibly an animalcule fungus. What the blight is I am not prepared to say, but this is the result of my practice in the use of lime, and I think that every gentleman who is troubled with the blight will find it is worth trying, at least.

Mr. Wood-Mr. B. F. Adams gave us quite an exhaustive paper on the subject of blight at our convention last year, in which he gave us the result of recent investigations, and it shows