176 ■ STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and what it is doing in horticultural lines that you grow more 

 and more wonderful in my mind, the more I know of you. And 

 yet, it is no wonder that you are a great State, with your neigh- 

 bors from the south, from the north, pressing down on you with 

 all their force for the products of your soil— no wonder that the 

 State of Maine can grow the biggest Irish potatoes in the world, 

 that you can grow the most beautiful red apples that were ever 

 grown. These calls are making a demand upon you, and when 

 you have the natural resources of course you respond to them, 

 and I am glad to see evidences of this in your exhibits. And as 

 I look over the audience here tonight and look over this wonder- 

 ful spread, these beautiful, bright, intelligent countenances, 

 indeed I feel grateful that I am here tonight. It seems to me 

 that if I were to live my life over again, and should have a 

 dozen boys, that I should send eleven of them up here to Maine, 

 and that other one, that twelfth one, of course it would be the 

 dearest one of all, the last one always is, well, after your Presi- 

 dent has been telling us about those 500 barrel boots, I should 

 send him here too. Whenever I see in the agricultural papers, 

 as I very often do, an article from the State of Maine, I read it 

 through and through, and I never have failed to find something 

 that was worthy of attention, worthy of study, something that 

 is solid like your hills and your mountains and your soil and the 

 products you exhibit today. And I am proud of the State. As 

 I read these and become better and better acquainted with you, 

 and converse with you as I have today and expect to tomorrow, 

 I feel that I am proud and happy to think that I am in Gardiner 

 tonight, and the State of Maine. 



A. A. HixoN, Secretary Worcester Horticultural Society. 

 Now there are plenty of people who will tell you all about 

 fruits, and what you ought to do, and the benefits to be derived 

 from growing of fruits, and I have only got five minutes and it 

 is not time enough for me to say much of anything to you about 

 fruits ; I should want more time than that. But I want to call 

 your attention to one thing, a crop that you don't think of, and 

 a crop that the State of Maine will have to produce or you won't 

 raise any fruit, and that is boys and girls. You have got to 



