STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 91 



PUBLIC SESSION. 



The hall was crowded, this beins: the closing: raeetins: of the con- 

 vention. Prof. George C, Purington, Principal of the Northern 

 Normal School, rendered a fine musical selection ; after which Mrs. 

 Hattie Park Keyes, the gifted wife of Ca[)t. Charles W. Keyes of 

 the Farmington Chronicle, read the following essav : 



THE VALUE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



TO THE FARMER. 



B}^ Mrs. Hattie Park Keyes. 



The subject is so broad and invites thought in so many different 

 directions that, in a brief article like this, one can hope to follow but 

 a few of the possible avenues of consideration, and these only for a 

 little way. It ma}' be trusted, however, that the candid and thought- 

 ful minds of those to whom this topic is introduced may work out 

 for themselves some ideas which, sooner or later, will be of some 

 advantage ; and I shall be, indeed, well pleased if calling attention 

 to this matter at this time may, in any degree, assist in the way of 

 greater enjoyment and a more remunerative int-ome from a life on the 

 farm. 



One of the great problems studied in agricultural gatherings in 

 Maine of late years is how to keep the bo3'S — and it may be added 

 ^irls, too — on the farm. The tendency has been so strong the past 

 thirty 3'ears to leave the farm for the workshop or the store, or, what 

 is as disastrous to the prosperity of our State, to leave the farms in 

 Maine for a farm, a ranch or a miner's camp in the West, that the 

 rural sections have suffered a serious decrease in population and, 

 therewith, a great loss in the results of the labor which these runaway 

 sons of the farm would have performed had they remained on or near 

 'the old homesteads. There is an old saving that times change and 

 we must change with them. This is true in the relative attractions 

 •of farm and city life. In former times, when intercourse with the 

 •cit}' was less easy and frequent than now, when the opportunities it 

 offered to young people were far less varied and not so well known as at 

 ithe present time, when the city streets possessed in much less degree 



