I02 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



REMARKS BY D. H. KNOWLTON, 

 Fannington, Maine. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



I can assure you it is a special pleasure for me to be with 

 you here tonight. I was very sorry that I was unable to be 

 present with you last night at the banquet. I have had a spe- 

 cial interest in that banquet. I think it was largely through my 

 influence, while I was secretary of the society, that it was insti- 

 tuted. I regretted very much that we did not have something 

 of that kind last year, because I think there is nothing that will 

 bring a lot of fruit growers together in a better frame of mind 

 than a good banquet, and I hope that your successors in office 

 may continue that practice. 



I have been very much interested in your program, and I wish 

 to congratulate the retiring officers upon its excellence. Mr. 

 Wheeler's talk was particularly enjoyable. I am reminded in 

 hearing him and seeing him of a visit which I made in the 

 vicinity of his home some ten or a dozen years ago. I think 

 it was on that occasion that I got my first real impression of 

 the possibilities of the New England soil. We went out to 

 the home of Mr. Samuel Hartley, who then lived in the town of 

 Lincoln. He had one hundred acres of land, in tillage and in 

 pasturage, etc. And he was, it seemed to me, a very skillful 

 operator. From that one hundred acres of land he had stored 

 in his barn, in the month of October, one hundred and twenty- 

 five tons of hay. He had two heavy teams, weighing nearly 

 1500 each, — very large horses. Well, he told me that com- 

 mencing with the first of May he had sent five two-horse loads 

 of produce from his farm to the city of Boston up to the middle 

 of October. When I was there he was at work conveying to 

 the city 1200 barrels of apples which he had in storage; all 

 from that one hundred acres of land. I was surprised. And, 

 as I say, it was the first real idea I ever had of the possibilities of 

 New England soil. The conditions here in the State of Maine, 

 it seems to me, are quite the equal of that. 



In the month of July, I had the pleasure of visiting for a day 

 and a half Benton Harbor in the State of Michigan, a point 



