42 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 



The afternoon session was devoted to the general subject o£ 

 orchard culture. The principal address of the session was, 



SOME NEW PROBLEMS IN HORTICULTURE. 

 Hon. Geo. T. Powell, Ghent, N. Y. 



There are certainly problems before us in horticulture, just 

 as well as in other lines of work. The business man has his 

 problems to m.eet, the manufacturer has his problems continually 

 before him, and this is equally true of us who are cultivating- 

 the soil — either as farmers or as fruit-growers. It is because hard 

 problems have been pressing upon us for solution, that we 

 have been passing through this period of depression which has 

 been alluded to in the former addresses to-day ; the depression 

 that has rested so heavily over our agriculture. But while this 

 depression has been severe, we have been studying upon these 

 problems, and we have reached the point where we are meeting, 

 now, the solution of some of them. By the very rapid develop- 

 ment which has been going on in this wonderful country of 

 ours during the last thirty years, there has developed a great 

 competition in agriculture, and, as the result of competition, 

 there have arisen some of the hard problems which otherwise, 

 would not have to be met. The Eastern farmer, who has been 

 pursuing the raising of grain, has found himself depressed by 

 this competition, and he has been forced to solve the problem 

 of getting larger returns from his labor than by following the 

 old practices once followed here in New England.* 



The developments in horticulture have been something mar- 

 velous during the last quarter of a century. Our country has 

 opened so much territory that we find a rapid extension of the 

 planting of orchards and fruits of all descriptions. Transporta- 

 tion has been so rapidly developed that all portions of our 

 great country seem to be brought closely together, and we meet 

 in Maine markets the products of the far West and the sunny 

 South, side by side with our own. 



