STATE POMOLOGICAI. SOCIETY. I3 



of all the products of the farm ; that you might come to feel, 

 ladies and gentlemen of the city and town, — how dependent 

 you are upon the man upon the hills, how necessary he is to 

 your existence, and how there should be a closer bond of fellow- 

 ship between all classes in the years to come for the building 

 up of the State. This industry which we are seeking to promote 

 means much to the man of the town as well as to the man of 

 the farm, an industry which in the State of Maine this year 

 will equal fully one and one-half million barrels of apples, yet 

 we have not reached a full crop. It is only in sections of our 

 State that our crop approaches its full capacity. So that we are 

 capable easily of growing more than two million barrels of good 

 fruit, such fruit as you see here upon these tables. 



I have in mind a little orchard of five acres set in 1888, — 200 

 trees, of which there are now living about 135 to 140 trees, 

 some good, some bad and some indifferent, and yet the owner, 

 of this orchard for the past nine years has taken out of it an 

 average of 268 barrels of apples which have sold upon an aver- 

 age for better than $3 per barrel. This year the crop was 550 

 barrels, following a crop of 287 last year. You see as an 

 investment, as a business proposition, it appeals to you. The 

 most marked results attained in New England are reported by 

 a gentleman in Massachusetts, who set an orchard of 5000 trees 

 in 1904 and 1905 and this year has taken from those trees $10,- 

 000 worth of fruit. It seems almost beyond comprehension that 

 these things can be, and yet they all attest what the men on the 

 farm are seeking to do, and it seems to me must suggest to you 

 the fact that they are working upon great problems as well as 

 you in the towns and cities, and working, as I said before, for 

 the good of the State of Maine. 



This Society stands pledged first of all to the promotion of 

 fruit growing, and the strengthening of the desire for the grow- 

 ing of better fruit, and the study of the questions of soil condi- 

 tions; that we may select varieties which are best adapted to 

 mdividual sections and localities, and the perfecting of fruit 

 which shall do the most for the State. I believe it offers an 

 inducement to men seeking an investment which cannot be 

 duplicated anywhere else in this country. If the men of Maine, 

 who have been sending their money to the far West, had bur 

 invested it upon the hills of IMaine, during past years, their re- 

 turns would have been far more secure and far more substan- 



