NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 93 



taken care of. I presume that these problems, or some of 

 them, at least, will be talked over at your meeting. 



I want to say again that I bring the best wishes of Mas- 

 sachusetts, from the Board of Agriculture, and I hope that 

 you will continue in your prosperous daily life. (Applause). 



The Toastmaster : We have got another man from 

 that neighborhood, whom we propose to call on during the 

 evening ; in fact, we have several men from up in that coun- 

 try, but we have got one man whom we particularly want to 

 hear from now, who comes from a little nearer the Arctic 

 Circle than the others. I am going to call on Prof. Ilitch- 

 ings of Maine to say a few words. 



Prof. E. F. Hitchings: Mr. President, Ladies and 

 Gentlemen : I listened with a great deal of attention to our 

 good brother who made the statement that he knew of only 

 one minister who was a pomologist. Down in Maine we have 

 had quite a few of them, and we have found that most of our 

 deacons were engaged in fruit growing. In Maine we have 

 had several difficulties in the fruit line. We met some of 

 those difficulties last fall when we came to Massachusetts to 

 show our mother that the child had gotten too old to be 

 spanked. Though we were set off and discarded in 1820, yet 

 in the intervening years we have felt that we have grown so 

 that possibly we could give our mother a few points. So we 

 are trying to do that along the line of better fruit, and we 

 feel that the New England Fruit Show has been more of a 

 benefit to Maine than any of the other New England states. 

 It is hardly the right thing for me to come down here from 

 the opposite end of New England to Connecticut and make 

 such a statement, but when your President made the excuse 

 that he did, that Brother Hale was not to be allowed here in 

 this hall to-night just because he took that first premium for 

 the Ben Davis, I felt that I ought to say something, and then 

 to thing that a Connecticut man who had said perhaps the 

 most against this should take this blue ribbon away from 

 Maine. I think it was a disgrace, because down in Maine 



