STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 37 



OUR EXHIBITIOX— THE VARIETIES— THE PLANTS 



AND FLOWERS. 



Opened by L. J. Shepard. 



Our exhibition is something to be proud of. The plants and 

 flowers are very good. Our exhibition of strawberries is very 

 good, akhough only about one-third as large as last year. The 

 season is a little late for strawberries in this section, at our place 

 it is just about the right season. We have about twenty-one 

 varieties. 



As to the varieties, that is a matter of mere diversity of opinion. 

 I might name a great many varieties and if you should look in 

 the seed catalogues you will find them so highly praised, that if 

 they were as good as they say they would drive all others from 

 the market. What a difference in looking at the strawberries 

 and then in going out on the street and looking at the straw- 

 berries the people are supposed to buy. To raise a good article 

 requires work and effort. To know how to grow them, I know 

 of no better way than to go among some of our growers and see 

 how they do it. Yovt saw the berries brought in by Mr. Pope. 

 To grow those berries requires cultivation. The soil should be 

 thoroughly pulverized. Set the plants in good order and do 

 not cover the crown. 



]Mr. Knowlton — I have in my mind so many good things in 

 connection with the opportunities we enjoyed yesterday that I 

 hardly know what to say at this time, but I am glad that we had 

 the opportunity of visiting the grounds of the hospital \vith 

 special reference to horticultural work as it is being done there. 



The pomological society for a great many years has been 

 organized for this horticultural work in the State, and for vari- 

 ous reasons it has been working along just about the same lines 

 in which it started. It seems to me that the work begun at the 

 start, while it was of good character and probablv exactly the 

 work that a society of our kind ought to do in the State, yet with 

 every other institution growing and increasing in usefulness and 

 power, the time has come when our society ought to do a great 

 deal more than it is doing, and this initiatorv field meeting was 



