LIBRARY 

 NEW VORK 

 BOTANICAL 



GARDEN 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF 



AGRICULTURE. 



In reviewing the work of this department for the past year, 

 we feel that encouraging results have been obtained. Our State 

 is showing a continued progress in agricultural lines, and is 

 becoming pre-eminently an agricultural state. Its agricultural 

 resources and possibilities are every year more fully realized. 

 Our efforts to interest the farmers in acquiring the knowledge 

 which is essential to the highest success in their calling, have 

 been attended with a good degree of success. The farmers' 

 institutes have been largely attended, and an increasing interest 

 manifested in the reports and bulletins published by the depart- 

 ment, and in all the methods by which we have endeavored to 

 disseminate information along advanced agricultural lines. The 

 courses in agriculture at the University of Maine have been 

 more fully attended than ever before, and the extension work 

 of the University, aided by this department and the grange, has 

 been productive of much good. 



Farm crops. 

 Although the past season has not been an especially favorable 

 one for all farm crops, the aggregate production exceeded some- 

 what that of former years. A good hay crop was harvested, 

 in fair condition. There was a substantial increase in the acre- 

 age of potatoes, and notwithstanding the fact that the yield in 

 some sections was not as large as in average years, the entire 

 amount of the potato crop of the state exceeds that of 1905 by 

 0^ several million bushels. Potato culture has received a great deal 

 ^more attention this year in the central and western part of the 

 ' State than ever before, and in some localities the land is very well 

 adapted to this crop. The amount of the apple crop was con- 



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