34 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



But the call for further work is still abroad. There are still 

 more trees than fruit in the State. Your President has gained 

 some lessons in the last three years that had he learned them 

 earlier in life would have been greatly to his advantage. Others 

 need these lessons. It is not the purpose at this time to discuss 

 how this needed culture is best applied, but to urge continued 

 attention to this important feature of successful fruit growing. 

 In the past years good crops of fruit have been realized when 

 nature got into a friendly mood and gave us the benefit of her 

 good fellowship. In the late harvest note what the "tender"' 

 Baldwin has given, in return for intelligent care bestowed, in 

 scores and hundreds of orchards, following one of the coldest 

 winters on record ; the fruit on a short acre of Northern Spy 

 trees, sold on the trees for six hundred dollars ; fail not to take 

 into account the scores of other bountiful crops you will learn 

 of at this gathering, and then remember we have but just begun 

 to realize the opportunity open to us in our goodly State for 

 continued successful fruit production. While we have made 

 vast strides, as a society, the hand of possibilities is beckoning to 

 us even more earnestly today than when we first took the 

 responsibility into our hands to lead the way to the still greater 

 achievements now plainly within our reach. 



VARIETIES. 



The question of varieties to plant will not down with the bid- 

 ding so long as there are continuous enlistments of new recruits 

 to the ranks of tree planters. This is today, as in the past, a 

 matter of vital importance to the industry. Your President is 

 on record in claiming that superior quality of the fruit is the 

 leading factor of value and therefore never should be omitted 

 from the calculation in deciding the question of variety to plant. 

 We have had a Ben Davis lesson the past winter. Another 

 chapter will be given at this meeting. The present system of 

 selling trees has a possible trend toward misleading in this dom- 

 inant factor of quality. The business of the tree salesman is 

 to sell trees. It is as natural as breathing that a salesman will 

 fall into line in recommending the kind that is selling freely. 

 Usually this is a variety the genuine merits of which are little 

 known. Thus it is that good, old fashioned varieties that have 

 formerly proved their merits in our own State get overlooked. 



