1894.] TRANSACTIONS. 23 



bury Russets, as did your Secretary last March, for which the 

 dealer asked seventy-five cents, with a cheek that looked as if it 

 never knew a blush ! We have known what it means to endure 

 an apple-ftimine. A.D. 1894-5, our trees bend beneath their 

 burden and there threatens to be a glut in our supply. Mean- 

 while there is a dearth in English orchards, and a large foreign 

 demand appears eager and quick to take what we can furnish in 

 abounding excellence. Always assuming that there is no unpar- 

 donable sin in exchange of produce, or barter if you prefer the 

 term ; and that there is no lack of patriotism in freighting a ship 

 with the fruit of our orchards, securing a profitable voyage by 

 returning with a paying cargo adapted to our needs. To cite a 

 somewhat famous phrase : " it is a condition, not a theory, that 

 confronts us." We are likely to be overwhelmed by the super- 

 fluity of our noblest fruit. Do the frugal orchardists whom I 

 see around me expect to find ready to hand a home-market insa- 

 tiate — omnivorous? Can any employer, as he reduces wages 

 by one stroke of his pen, create a single new stomach or enlarge 

 the aching void in those existing? If so, well ; — for thereafter 

 they may perhaps try to supplement the processes of Nature, 

 aiding her work by augmenting still more that bounty to which 

 our indolence is indebted in usual happy-go-lucky fashion ! Our 

 old trees are bearing once again, and there is prospect of a mar- 

 ket for what they yield. But did we prune, thin out, manure, 

 do anything in fact, but 



" Sittlug on the stile, Mary," 

 attune our most lugubrious tones to that most shiftless of all 

 refrains — " The Lord will provide !" Will He indeed? If you 

 neglect planting new trees in virgin soil, just wait a few years 

 and admire His provision ! But watch and take heed what He 

 will do for you after your old trees are dead from exhaustion, 

 perishing from that very excess of bounty whereon you lazily 

 depend ; when your new orchards fail to come into bearing, since 

 you declined setting them out, in the fancy that apples had 

 ceased to be factors in human temptation. Or, worse and more 

 discreditable still, because you would not plant that only poster- 

 ity might enjoy. And then, degenerate descendants from men 



