40 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Mr. CoNANT : I will say, as our president has already said, 

 that I have given this matter a great deal of thought ; have sat 

 up nights and discussed it ; it is somewhat difficult, I believe, to 

 get the growers together on any definite method of collecting 

 data along this line in orcharding. Orchardists do not set the 

 same number of trees to the acre, or give them the same care, 

 and I question, after giving it a whole lot of study, whether we 

 can ever hope, by using the crop, calling it a crop, or comparing 

 it with last year's yield, to improve on the percentage basis as 

 now used by the crop estimating Bureau. Personally, having 

 reported to the secretary for the Bureau, and having gotten 

 accustomed to figuring it on the percentage basis of the normal, 

 it is comparatively easy for me to get somewhere near a yield. 

 And when you realize that there is such a great variation in the 

 judgment of men in estimating their own crops, it is really dis- 

 couraging to get them together. I would like to have Mr. 

 Sanders give the result of an experiment (perhaps you can call 

 it an experiment) last year, with a certain number of growers, 

 in estimating their own crop. 



Mr. Sanders: Last year I sent out to thirty-seven apple 

 growers, some of them here in Maine, others in New Hampshire, 

 Vermont and Massachusetts, an inquiry asking their estimate 

 on their own crop, in barrels. That was to be made the first 

 of September. Then, at the close of the harvest season, these 

 same thirty-seven men reported the yields that they actually had 

 and the total number of barrels estimated came within three 

 per cent of the total number of barrels that those thirty-seven 

 men harvested. That is, the total harvest varied less than three 

 per cent from the total estimated number. But on the other 

 hand, the individual estimates dwindled down to mere wild 

 guesses. I remembered the extreme was near two hundred and 

 sixty per cent away from the facts. One man missed his crop 

 by that margin. But last year was an extremely difficult year 

 to guess at in any way. In Oxford county the crop was all but 

 a failure, and I am not sure but that this wild guess came from 

 up there where the man had practically no crop at all. There 

 were five per cent of these thirty-seven men who came within 

 five per cent of estimating the crop even back two months before 

 harvest, and about five per cent more came within ten per cent 

 and five per cent more within twenty per cent. Then they 



