STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 65 



proposed at Winthrop and elected officers who had been there 

 nominated. 



They also elected Hon. Hannibal Belcher of Farmington 

 member of the Board of Agriculture in behalf of the society. 

 Chose delegates to the meeting of the American Pomological 

 Society to be held in Boston in September, then following, 

 instructed the ex-committee to make arrangements for an 

 autumn exhibition of fruits and flowers. 



Thus we see that Winthrop is the birthplace of this society 

 and it seems eminently fitting that you hold your winter meet- 

 ing in this town, and once more mingle with its people, who 

 are ever ready to help on a good cause, who put their shoulder 

 to the wheel in 1873 and said organize such a society as will 

 make us better orchardists. That will make us plant new 

 orchards, that would teach us to take care, cultivate and prune 

 at such a time, and in such a way that we might reap an abund- 

 ant harvest of the very best varieties of fruits and fully devel- 

 oped to perfection if such a thing is attainable. 



The Maine State Pomological Society is now very nearly 

 twenty-four years old. What a vast amount of good has been 

 accomplished in those twenty-four years. Looking back over 

 the past I can see in my mind the old orchard, but not a grafted 

 one bearing lots of fruit year after year of no good only to make 

 up into cider for which a good price could be obtained to be 

 drank as a beverage thereby lowering the standard of a com- 

 munity in which this practice was earned on. But how 

 changed the scene, as we look upon it to-day after these years 

 of meeting together and discussing methods and practices one 

 with the other. We find the old orchard grafted, new ones set 

 out, and the sentiment of the people unite in saying unless a 

 tree is a grafted one it is of no earthly use. Forty years ago 

 there was but little grafting done, most orchards were bearing 

 fruit in the natural State. In my own neighborhood only one 

 farm could be called an orchard farm. This farm known as the 

 Major Wood farm, now owned by W. H. Keith, produced in 

 1863, ten years before the Maine State Pomological Society was 

 formed about 500 barrels of apples, while other farms equally 

 as good on the same road produced from fifteen to fifty barrels a 

 year. 



5 



