26 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



upon somebody's land and make experiments which shall have 

 some permanent value even though we h'ave only a year's tenure 

 upon the land. Experiments which need to be done in pomol- 

 ogy are not experiments which can be made in a moment, nor 

 one, or two, or five years. If we are ever going here in Maine 

 to get at problems which are fundamental to our apple growing, 

 we have got to do it upon land which shall be under the con- 

 trol of the experimenter, whoever he may be, for a long period 

 of years. There are many problems which are not only of 

 great scientific interest but of wonderfully profound practical 

 importance, that cannpt be solved perhaps in your lifetime or 

 mine. But they should be undertaken and they should be under- 

 taken fairly promptly. Xo one knows anything about the rela- 

 tion of scion to graft, for instance. We talk something about 

 it, but one set of experiments which were made in France, 

 entirely unsupported by anybody else, constitute all that we 

 know of the relation of scion to graft — the relation between the 

 stock and the scion. Now that can be carried out only through 

 a long series of years of experimenting. 



Two years ago this Society asked two things in resolutions. 

 One was that the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station 

 should give more attention in its work to pomology ; and the 

 second, in order that this should be possible, the State Legisla- 

 ture was asked to provide a farm in the apple belt which should 

 contain orchards upon which the Experiment Station could 

 work. Such a bill was introduced into the last Legislature in 

 the Senate and referred to the Committee on Agriculture. At 

 its hearing, every person that appeared was in favor of the bill. 

 So far as I know every single member of the Legislature that 

 ever heard of the. bill was in favor of it, but for one of those 

 reasons which are entirely unexplainable the committee in its 

 wisdom reported that it should be referred to the next Legis- 

 lature. The bill which is in the hands of the Secretary of the 

 Senate, Mr. Dunbar, will come up in this next Legislature when 

 it convenes, will be already there, and will probably be referred 

 by them immediately to the Committee on Agriculture. 



This farm is needed for many things. Don't misunderstand 

 me. The Experiment Station is not asking for a farm. We 

 don't want a farm from our standpoint. Only if Maine wants 



