THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 1912 



10.00 A. M. 



(SECOND DAY) 



President. The time has arrived for calling this meeting 

 to order. We all have great interest in fruit growing at 

 present, and we have the western fruit to complete with a 

 beautiful fruit, that will keep up to the first of May. We 

 have no varieties here in New England that are in first 

 class condition after the first of March or possibly the mid- 

 dle of February. Now, we want to know what to plant in 

 order to compete with this western fruit, and we have with 

 us a man who, perhaps knows more about the new varieties 

 than anyone else in Massachusetts. I take pleasure in intro- 

 ducing Mr. Fred A. Smith, of Turner Hill, Ipswich. (Ap- 

 plause). 



OBSERVATIONS ON APPLE VARIETIES 



Mr. Fred A. Smith, Ipswich, Mass. 



Ladies and Gentlemen and Members of the Massachus- 

 etts Fruit Growers' Association: If you examine your pro- 

 grams you will note that we are assembled in our eighteenth 

 annual session of this Association. If anyone had come be- 

 fore you seventeen years ago and said anything which in 

 any way could have been considered as undermining all your 

 traditions as to the. estimation of the Baldwin apple, I am 

 sure that he would have been called a heretic and would 

 have exposed himself to severe criticism. It is far from my 

 intention to do anything of that sort, but we must pause a 

 moment and notice some of the weaknesses which the Bald- 

 win apple appears to show. We fully recognize what a won- 

 derful variety the Baldwin apple has been and is. Probably, 

 with one exception, the Baldwin range, in this country, it is 

 the largest. Just recall for a moment that this is one of the 

 apples of Nova Scotia, that it is the commercial apple for the 

 southern portions of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont ; 

 it is certainly the standard apple today of southern New 

 England ; it is the great commercial apple of New York 

 State. It is a successful apple in Pennsylvania over a eon- 



