STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 95 



sidered. The excuse for its use in earlier days has already been 

 noticed, but that does not hold today. 



That spraying both to destroy insect pests and protect from 

 blight, rust and scab must be resorted to by every grower is one 

 of the lessons not yet drilled in, else we should not see so large 

 a per cent of poor fruit or hear so many complaints of rust, blight 

 or scab, and this society can do no better service than to organize 

 an educational campaign along these lines. The danger and loss 

 are not appreciated and surely it cannot be computed. 



One man sprays and his neighbors do not and all suffer mate- 

 rially. Insect life will multiply, new forms will doubtless appear, 

 increased complications are sure to arise, and to be forewarned 

 is to be forearmed. 



We must prepare to meet the Browntailed Moth, the Gypsy 

 Moth, and without doubt the San Jose Scale. We shall best be 

 prepared to cope with these when we appreciate in largest meas- 

 ure the importance of spraying for the destruction of pests now 

 common among us and for the prevention of diseases so preva- 

 lent today. 



We have faith in fruit growing, and the certainty of natural 

 conditions of soil and climate being established, it needs only that 

 the industry present itself as a worthy investment for wealth to 

 flow in and the fruit trees multiply. Had a fraction of the treas- 

 ure which has gone out of this State into orange groves in Florida 

 and California been invested in orchards on these hills of Maine, 

 the bending branches would all these years have yielded their 

 juicy fruit and the dividends would have satisfied far better than 

 the assessments so often met or the occasional returns received 

 from far away slopes. 



The cry that Maine is not an agricultural State is dying out, 

 and in its place one hears the whisperings of faith in a future 

 when our varied lines of husbandry shall claim attention and over 

 our hills the petals of the apple trees shall drop in early June like 

 snow flakes in December, and our fruit, guarded from all insect 

 pests and protected by agents which give rather than destroy life, 

 shall go out to satisfy the lover of the richest nectar the gods ever 

 created, whether on native soil, on far off prairie, or on the isles 

 across the sea. 



