STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 55 



ing nitrogen on one plot, phosphoric acid on another, potash 

 on another, then different combinations, nitrogen and potash, 

 nitrogen and phosphoric acid, phosphoric acid and potash with- 

 out your nitrogen, etc., and then note results, and you will then 

 be getting down to fundamental principles. A good many peo- 

 ple think that the Experiment Station ought to do this. The 

 Experiment Station cannot possibly do it for all who might wish 

 it. The Experiment Station can do just what Prof. Munson is 

 doing at Mr. Pope's, it can conduct a series of such experiments 

 as I have suggested, and note the results, as is being done in 

 Mr. Pope's orchard. Those results are good in this orchard — 

 I think Prof. Munson would substantiate me in taking this 

 stand — but they are not necessarily good in Mr. DeCoster's 

 orchard or in any other orchard unless the conditions of the soil 

 are the same as in Mr. Pope's orchard, and require the same 

 elements of plant food that they do in this orchard. Now these 

 experiments are not a failure by any means, even though they 

 apply only to the orchard in which they are made, no matter 

 what the results may be, for they show the fruit growers of 

 Maine how to find out these things for themselves, and this is 

 the important thing after all. The problem can be worked out 

 in your own orchard, for your own conditions, and in no other 

 orchard than "your own. You may be shown in other orchards 

 how to do it, and that is where it seems to me the practical 

 feature of those experiments lies so far as their great value to 

 the fruit growing interests of the State is concerned. 



E. H. Cook : But I hope the gentleman who has been dis- 

 cussing this subject of fer!ilization will forgive me if I make one 

 remark on it, and that is that ninety-nine apple trees out of a 

 hundred in the good State of ]Maine need everything that 

 ever would benefit any tree in the world. They lack everything. 

 They need your nitrogen, and your potash and your phosphoric 

 acid, and everything else. Perhaps Mr. Dawes may have trees 

 that don't need some of these, but that is the exception. All 

 over this State of Maine the trees need everything. They are 

 just crying for everything that ever benefitted a tree, no matter 

 whether it is a saw or the plow, or any kind of fertilizer. Most 

 of the farmers I think in Maine should be thoroughly impressed 

 with Air. Plaisted's formula for dressing apple trees, — Mr. 



