54 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



way that I can assist in their having it, I shall be pleased to do 

 so. 



Thanking you for the attention you have given me and for the 

 coming this way of the society, I hope to meet you in the future 

 many times. 



Secretary Knowlton. Mr. President: It may perhaps be 

 a little informal to say anything directly in response to what 

 Mayor Beal has said. He has gone over the ground quite fully, 

 explaining how it happened that we saw fit to come here this 

 year to conduct this part of the exhibition. We have talked this 

 matter over, the officers of the society, many times among our- 

 selves, but we somehow felt a little shy about approaching peo- 

 ple over this way, because we felt somehow that if they wanted 

 us to come they would ask us, and so we contented ourselves 

 with simply doing the exhibition work that we have been doing; 

 but little by little the field seemed to enlarge and the organiza- 

 tion which our society has for exhibition and other purposes 

 is such that we could do better work than could be done here 

 without any special fruit organization behind it. There seemed 

 to be a propriety in Mayor Beal inviting us to join with them 

 as well as a propriety in our accepting the invitation. We, as 

 the executive committee of the society, saw fit to accept the 

 proposition without consulting the members of the society, 

 because there was no opportunity of doing it this year and the 

 arrangements were such with the officers of the society here that 

 it did not seem necessary for us to get any opinion of the mem- 

 bers; in fact, it was not possible to do it at the time, and the 

 season was so far advanced that it seemed to be emphatically 

 necessary for the officers to take action at once. And just here 

 ■ — perhaps it is entirely proper that I should say it, because 

 there are several of our exhibitors here who are likely to call for 

 the explanation — the fact is when the matter was closed up 

 between the two organizations, the premium lists for the exhibi- 

 tion here had been quite largely distributed, and when the mat- 

 ter of the revision came before us we looked the matter over 

 very carefully, and we said just like this: Now quite a lot of 

 these premium lists are out, and this is about the way the fair has 

 been conducted in the past, and until we know more about it 

 ourselves we had better let that arrangement alone. And that 



