and has hastened to carry out the provisions of the First Legislature for the location of the first two of the five Secondary or District Agricultural Schools contemplated by the authors of the bill creating this important and necessary link between the common schools and the central or parent college at Stillwater. The district college located at Tishomingo, and known as the "Murray School," has already begun the making of a creditable name and history and to vindicate the sound judgment of its location. Through a carefully planned course of study, it has entered happily upon its proud mission of extending to the ambitious and worthy youth of that section of the State the beneficent educational advantages of which they have been hitherto unfortunately deprived.

The "Connors School," located at Warner, Oklahoma, is not yet in running order, put it is very probable that it will soon be in operation and ready to afford the farmers' boys and girls of that district every facility for securing a practical education along lines that will lead them back to the farm instead of away from it.

Fortunately for the Board and the success of one of the largest and most vital business and financial interests entrusted to its care, the live stock industry of the State, it has been possible for the State to command the services of G. T. Bryan, a member of the Board, as Superintendent of Live Stock Inspection. Mr. Bryan was formerly a member of the Territorial Live Stock Sanitary Board, and brings to the discharge of his duties a special ability and fitness acquired by large experience in dealing with the cattle interests of the State and with the many intricate questions involved in the enforcement of quarantine regulations both State and National. His department, which is reported upon at length elsewhere in this volume, co-operates closely and harmoniously with the Federal Department in the earnest effort that is now being made to eradicate within the State every known variety of infectious disease from which the live stock interests have suffered so severely in the past, and the presence of which in the pastures and on the farm and ranges of Oklahoma has so seriously affected the market value of our live stock productions.

The Board has been equally fortunate in being able to retain at the head of its statistical department Mr. J. E. Woodworth, who began his services with the Oklahoma Territorial Board of Agriculture, and is really the author and founder of the practical, complete and reliable system of gathering statistics now in operation in this department. His detailed report on the seventy-five counties of the State, comprises the whole of Part IX in this volume and constitutes a contribution to the fund of reliable information about the resources and development of our magnificent young State, that will prove invaluable to the seeker after impartial and thoroughly reliable data relating to the area, value and production of the agricultural staples and the number and aggregate farm value of our rapidly expanding live stock interests. Mr. Woodworth is a home product; an Oklahoma boy, who is a graduate of the Oklahoma Agricultural College, and he brings to his work as Statistician an intimate knowledge of soli conditions, agricultural and horticultural resources, and farm and orchard development, that makes him a most valuable member of the Board's official staff, and warrants the assurance that his statistical tables, crop

reports, etc., will continue to command the confidence and respect always accorded to competent, painstaking and conscientious effort.

The department has been especially favored in getting out this report and dealing with the many embarrassments that have always resulted from the delayed transmission of county clerks' and assessors' returns, and the absence of any previous official data for a large portion of the State with which to make comparisons and corrections, in having the advice and assistance of Mr. F. W. Gist, one of the most capable and experienced of the many able statistical experts in the employ of the Federal Department of Agriculture. Mr. Gist's long service in the Southwestern cotton states as an experienced, expert crop reporter in the exacting work of the Federal Department of Agriculture, renders his assistance and co-operation of the highest technical and practical value, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge our obligation to him for his active and generous collaboration in the preparation of our statistical tables and articles on the planting, growth and production of the great Southern staple, cotton.

The Secretary's department is deeply indebted to the members of the faculty of the A. & M. College and the Experiment Station at Stillwater, whose special articles on timely and important subjects will lend much to the interest which this report will have for the progressive Oklahoma farmers. To Dr. John Hamilton, B. Youngblood, R. L. Bennett and W. D. Hunter, of the National Department of Agriculture, we are also under many obligations for the instructive and helpful articles published under their

names.

This acknowledgement of helpful assistance from others in preparing this Report would be incomplete without mention of the faithful and competent co-operation of Miss Myrtle Garrison, clerk and stenographer to the Board, and of Miss Mabel Lindwall, stenographer.

CHAS. F. BARRETT,

Secretary.

J. P. CONNORS,

President.

Members State Board of Agriculture, with President of College and Secretary of Board. From left to right in rear row: Daniel Diehl, President J. H. Connell, R. W. Lindsay, J. W. L. Corley, A. C. Cobb, J. C. Elliott, Vice-President; Chas. F. Barrett, Secretary; Thad Rice. Front row: Ewers White, Treasurer; G. T. Bryan, Supt. Live Stock Inspection; R. F. Wilson, President J. P. Connors, M. F. Ikard.

HORTICULTURE IN OKLAHOMA

With Observations on the Care of Orchards and the Methods of Marketing (From a lecture by Prof. O. M. Morris, of the Oklahoma Experiment Station.)

In discussing this subject this afternoon, I will divide it into three divisions: First, what our fruit interests are at present; second, what they could be and, third, how we can make them what they shoul;d be. In the first division, I simply want to call your attention briefly to what we know is being done in our own neighborhood in fruit growing. I want to call your attention in just this way: How many who are here have plenty of fruit to eat of your own raising at this time? Think about how soon apples went up to a dollar a bushel in your home community. How many of the stores in your own home community depend on the fruit grown in the neighborhood? What they are doing in other neighborhoods and in other countries does not interest us; what the Red River district in Oregon is doing in the way of fruit growing is of passing interest; but the question of what is being done in our own neighborhood is of vast importance to us. Up to this time, with very few exceptions, the orchards have been planted for quick results and very little attention has been given to planting for the future results. However the orchards have been planted and tended, this one fact is evident; that up to this time, they have never supplied the demand for fruit in Oklahoma.

In fruit growing, we find that the nursery business in Oklahoma is the foundation of the fruit business. We have enough local nurseries to take abundant care of our home business. Hitherto, we have been buying of foreign nurseries and the relation that that bears to our present fuit situation is simply this: then we could not buy nursery stock at home and the results are that the first orchards are planted to varieties which are apparently of no value in this country and now we have a great many orchards that are not doing what they should do. Our fruit interests in that respect are nearly what they were twelve or fifteen years ago because we won't go to the home nurseries and buy trees. Outside nurseries come in and sell right under the noses of local nurseries because they put up a big talk.

The next condition of importance is that the handling and planting of fruit trees, as well as other trees, has been neglected owing to the fact that we had our living to make and had to devote our time and ground to the things that would bring immediate results. The orchards that were planted, with a very few exceptions, that are living today, grew in spite of the conditions that worked against, instead of with any help that the farmer might give it. It is just that difference in orchard cultivation and orchard growing as it is practiced and our fruit crops are a monument to our industry in that respect.

The demand for fruit in Oklahoma has never been satisfied by homegrown fruit, except in a peach crop once or twice and then the home de

mand was satisfied simply because the markets were not well managed and our crop was not well prepared for market. A great deal of it was of a quality that could not be placed on a first-class market. There are now new orchards that ought to bear enough to furnish a considerable amount of fruit for the next year but I have no hesitancy in saying that a small percentage of that will reach the market at a profit, given the very best conditions for market, simply for the reason that we have not as yet taught our fruit growers the fact that the marketing of fruit is just as important as the growing of fruit. Up to this time fruit growing in Oklahoma has been carried on in an experimental way and this form of experimentation has been of such a character as to cover almost the entire field of planting, growing, marketing, shipping, and storing the fruit.

We have in Oklahoma as good fruit lands as any other state in the Union, I don't except any one. The few specimens Mr. Householder brought in this afternoon will place Oklahoma on a basis with any fruit growing section of the world. These specimens are not one or two out o. several bushels, but are representative fruits of what Mr. Householder and a great many other fruit growers are producing with a reasonable amount of care and intelligence. The work that has been done along the lines of planting has been so varied that to pick out a successful man in orchard growing is to settle definitely the processes that should be pursued in planting orchards. The cultivation has been varied all the way from no cultivation at all to the most intensive cultivation that could reasonably be hoped to pay returns for its doing. The cultivation in the main, if summed down to the fact that the orchard is a crop on the land as truly as is corn and that it should be cultivated as a crop and that when a reasonable system of cultivation as a crop of trees is employed, reasonable returns for this cultivation will surely follow.

We have found that a larger number of varieties are adaptable to profitable growing in Oklahoma than was at first hoped for. On the other hand, it is definitely determined that but a few varieties should be used as the basis of the large commercial orchards and that success with these commercial orchards can be attained to the highest degree only when a very Judicious selection of a very few varieties is made.

The shipping qualities of our fruit have been tested for four or five years and this quality has proven beyond a doubt to be equal to any fruit produced in the United States, when it is properly handled. The exhibit at the World's Fair, which many of you visited, proved beyond the question of a doubt the storage and keeping qualities of Oklahoma fruit. True, our fruit matures earlier than does the fruit grown farther north, but it has that peculiar quality that makes it an excellent storage fruit if properly stored and handled. We have found, also, that our fruit is as good quality as that produced in any other fruit section. There is a difference in the quality of fruit produced on different kinds of soil but the amount of sunshine that Oklahoma enjoys, produces a quality in her fruits that is hard to equal and is practically never excelled by any other fruit growing district. There are many old men in Oklahoma who have not faith in Okla. home because they are inclined to look back upon the good fruit that grew in their fathers' orchards, but the simple fact that distance lends enchantment to the view and that they are remembering the vigor of a boyhood appetite compared with that of old age, is not a test of the quality