56 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



duty to keep this subject before you uutil every family in the State 

 is fully supplied. The health of the people demand it. Listen to 

 one of America's greatest pomologists, Marshall P. Wilder, on this 

 point : 



"Think once more, ray friends, of the great blessings which you 

 may confer on mankind by the multiplication of good fruits. Next 

 to saving the soul is the saving of health, and I know of no better 

 m ans than an abundant supply of ripe fruits. Fruits are the over- 

 flow of nature's bounty ; gems from the skies which are dropped 

 down to beautily the earth, charm the sight, gratify the taste, and 

 minis er to the enjoyment of life , and the more we realize this, the 

 more shall we appreciate the Divine goodoess to us, and the duty 

 of providing them for others." 



This duty the fruit growers of Maine met when in the year 1873 

 they organized the Maine S ate Pomological .Society. Grand work 

 have they done in promoting the growth of fruits in our State and 

 showing the importance of the industry. 



First amoi g the small fruits or berries comes the strawberry both 

 in season and demand, but before taking up its cultivation, as ours 

 is a botanical family, we will look into the botany to a certain 

 extent of the strawberry and other small fruits, as given by Gray. 

 It^ b 'tanical name is Fragaria (named from the fragrance of its 

 fruit). When we speak of fruit we mean the ripened ovar}' with 

 its contents. Some fruits as tbey are common y called are not 

 fruits at all in the strict botaniial sense. A strawberry, although 

 one of the choicest of fruits in the common acceptati n, is only an 

 enlarged and pulpy receptacle, bearing the real fruits (that is the 

 ripened pistils) scattered over its surface and too small to be much 

 noticed. This small, dry achene is plainly a ripened ovary showing 

 the remains of its style or stigma or the place from which it has 

 fallen. 



In the raspberry and blackberry each grain is a similar pistil in 

 the flower, but unlike the pistil in the strawberry it ripens into a 

 miniature stone fruit or drupe. 



So iu the strawberry we eat the receptacle or end of the flower 

 stalk, in the raspberry a cluster of stone fruits, like cherries on a 

 very small scale, and in the blackberry, both a juicy receptacle 

 and a cluster of stone fruits covering it. We see again the wisdom 

 of our Creator in the succession of fruits coming through the 

 entire season. 



