94 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



is good enough for anybody. He needn't be ashamed to put 

 up a box of his Ben Davis apples and send them to the King 

 and Queen of England, or the President of the United States. 

 But he should put a ticket in them telling when to eat them — 

 not before Thanksgiving or Christmas, but next spring, next 

 summer perhaps. 



There are half a dozen leading varieties, — the Baldwins, the 

 Northern Spy, the Wealthy, the Greening if you will, but don't 

 get in too many kinds. 



There are three kinds of land which we can utilize for or- 

 chards. There is the best land on our farm, by which I mean 

 the land that has been tilled, and is in good heart, and which 

 may be the best suited at the time being for an orchard. Then 

 there is the wild land, such as pastures, where the land has been 

 partly cleared, and has more or less fertihty. The third class 

 is the forest land. 



I am going to advise you first to take your best lands. Now 

 I suppose you will call me right down on that, some of you good 

 farmers here who think a great deal of nice slopes and well-tilled 

 fields. But I want to tell you this, — that there is no acre of 

 land that you have on your farm, however good your tilled land 

 is, that will compare in results with an orchard. I have an 

 orchard which has been planted twenty years, and ever since 

 it was ten years old it has been yielding five or six per cent on 

 a thousand dollars an acre. Now I don't say that to bring my- 

 self into the matter, but I simply want to call attention to the 

 value that you can give to your land by putting trees on to it. 



You can talk with any of your banking men, and let them tell 

 you how much more money they will loan on your farm if you 

 have apple trees planted on it, if they have any experience in 

 this line. Of course I do not mean to say that if your best lands 

 are low lands, running beside creeks, with clay soil, you should 

 set apple trees on them. But you have enough good land. Some 

 part of the average farm here in Maine is usually suited for 

 growing apples. Of course you must consider that the uplands, 

 the hillsides, or even the hilltops, are most desirable. We find 

 on those locations usually between a light loam and a heavy 

 loam ; and in the long run that medium loam is the best suited 

 for the growing of the apple. Then of course the better location 

 you have as far as protection from the winds of the west and 



