STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Jl 



it, and it might not have been just, yet they did it, and we lost 

 the grange premium of one hundred dollars, which would have 

 come to Maine if it had not been for the Ben Davis apple. 

 Those twelve plates entered by one of the Maine granges stood 

 next to the Worcester grange exhibit, and ours had the Ben 

 Davis in it and was scored out on account of the apples in the 

 Worcester exhibit being of better commercial standard. So 

 you see we lost one hujidred dollars on that score. 



In remarks made here a short time ago, one gentleman refer- 

 red to our apple trees here in Maine and spoke of an apple tree 

 being worth fifty dollars. Well, let us take an apple tree thirty- 

 five years old, for instance, as being worth fifty dollars. Now 

 I will leave it with you gentlemen, if you have a fifty dollar 

 cow in your barn, will you treat her as you have treated the 

 fifty dollar tree in your orchard? Let us be honest with our- 

 selves, and go home with the determination that we will give 

 our orchards more care. We will cut out the dead trees and 

 treat the diseased ones. 



We have these orchard conditions today, and we know what 

 to do ; let us go home and do it. There are a few orchards in 

 Maine to which this lesson need not apply, but there are very 

 few of them. You can count them on one hand, perhaps. And 

 on the 60,000 farms in the State of Maine, how many orchards 

 are there? Why, I will venture to say not ten per cent that 

 would go by the designated name of an orchard. We are 

 neglecting our trees. We are allowing our orchards to go 

 down just because they had a blow three years ago, — the winter 

 killing. If we would eliminate those old dead snags, and give 

 the sick ones good treatment, just the same as we go to a dentist 

 and have our teeth fixed, we would see, in the next five years tcv 

 come, or even less than that, some results. 



I will now proceed to the pictures. This is the room where 

 the largest exhibit of fruit was on the tables, showing you some 

 15,000 plates in all. This of course does not include the im- 

 mense display of Baldwins. The photographer had to stand 

 back to the tables where the Baldwins were. And those of 

 you who went there remember that that was one of the greatest, 

 object lessons of the whole exhibit, the immense table of Bald- 

 wins from all over New England. I am sorry to say that 

 Maine was cut out on the Baldwin question for the reason that 

 our fruit was not matured. It had not the color, and it would 



