300 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



mittee on resolutions at an early date and make plans to secu-re 

 seed so that at our next meeting we will be in a position to 

 offer this seed to our members, it would be a good thing. That 

 seems to me a proper way to get at some definite plan to make 

 this a great success so that it will be on a large enough scale for 

 the members to reap some benefit from it. It would have to be 

 discussed by a smaller body tlian we liave here. 



I move that the executive committee go ahead and not only 

 plan but take some means of executing it, during the year. 



F. S. Adams. I want to say tliat we have formulated some 

 plans which I wish to present to this association. During this 

 last year Mr. Leland and myself, with the assiistance of Mr. 

 Mitchell of Freedom Academy, have inspected 50 or 60 farms. 

 We took the farms where we knew the men were pretty good 

 seed growers. We had in mind not so much to help the men 

 who are raising seeds, for as a rule those men are able to take 

 care of themselves, but we wanted to help the great majority of 

 farmers who want to buy seed. We found out in our investiga- 

 tions that the potato si'tuation was better taken care of than any 

 other one of the seed propositions. We found quite a few 

 farmers doing good work raising seed .potatoes ; but when we 

 came to the grains, we did not find so good conditions. We 

 did not find so many men who were making a specialty of 

 raising grains for seed. Mr. Copeland is raising seed oats, but 

 very few others are doing anything in this line. In inspecting 

 these fanms we ,had in view finding ouit what the men were 

 doing. For instance, if they had been raising one kind of seed 

 for a number of years, what the average yield had been for 

 those years, and also if the seed was absolutely clean from for- 

 eign seeds. We found quite a few farms where the farmers 

 had been raising a cer'tain kind of oats for four or five years 

 and were raising some igood seed which was absolutely clean of 

 weeds, and we found other farms where this was not so. What 

 we had in mind was getting out a catalogue this coming winter, 

 putting in a Hst of those farmers who are raising seed that we 

 know to be absolutely clean, from personal inspection. We 

 have been sending out circulars for returns, and have a state- 

 ment from the men who have been growing these seeds, as 

 to how long they have been raising them, and what the average 

 yield has been for five years if they have been raising them for 



