STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 55 



The value of the egg product to the State of Maiue must to-day be 

 reckoned by the millioos. At the same time, consumption has so 

 increased that prices for 1890 ruled higher than for several years. 

 The facts are, that as a people, we are beginning to value articles of 

 food for what they contain, and not with the one thought of first 

 cost ; and hence the use of eggs is being extended. There can be 

 no danger of over production, even in brains, because only a small 

 per cent will persist in their work of development. I believe that it 

 would be a paying investment to put a lot of hens in a plum orchard, 

 even if they did not produce an egg. Here is an industry of special 

 value to those living near good markets, or along the line of our 

 railroads. The plums sold in Maine markets are largely grown in 

 California. We pay a living price to the grower there, transport 

 across the continent, and then complain about the quality of the fruit 

 and the poverty oi the farms of New England. Hardly a farmer in 

 Maine but might add hundreds of dollars yearly to his income out 

 of a plum orchard, and the hens will take care of the question of 

 fertilization, and also that more important matter, the curculio. A 

 poultry grovrer in Massachusetts fenced a portion of his plum trees, 

 and stocked with poultry, and found in a series of years that where 

 those on the outside had been stung to the extent of sixty per cent, 

 on the inside the loss was less than two per cent. 



In the near future, Aroostook will supply our markets with late 

 plums, and the energetic, business farmers there reap a rich har- 

 vest ; while those enjoying greater blessings, near to the good mar- 

 kets, will keep on howling about the tariff, the silver bill, or the 

 next candidate for postmaster, and let the golden opportunity slip 

 through their fingers. The results of breeding, feeding and educa- 

 tion on the little body we call a hen are such that while her total weight 

 is but about three pounds, she is capable of taking the food we give 

 and converting it, in the wonderful machine within her, into about 

 twenty pounds of eggs yearly, and, at the same time doing 

 faithful service among the trees, seeking for grubs worms and 

 insects, and enriching the land. Lands worth to-day less than five 

 dollars an acre may, within fifteen j^ears, be made to pay for first 

 investment, interest and taxes, and also the labor account in full, 

 and then sell readily for three hundred dollars an acre ; while the 

 hens, which have done the work of fertilizing, will have yielded a 

 net income of one dollar and a half per head yearly. All this is 

 possible to an}- young man of Maine who has faith in himself, in the 



