46 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



I say it with all respect to everything else that we have on the 

 program, that the most instructive thing along nature lines, and 

 along fruit growing lines, if you please, because the enemies are 

 in there and the friends too, is right there in that collection — the 

 insects, and what the young lady is telling these boys and girls 

 and the older ones in regard to those insects. Now we are not 

 doing enough of it — it bears upon me as well as upon others — 

 but I trust that the future officers of the Society so far as the 

 program is concerned will endeavor to get in more young men 

 and more voung women in this work. 



And another thing, we are having failures in our fruit 

 growing — failure in growing this variety, failure in growing 

 another variety, failure perhaps in reaching the right markets 

 and the like of that. Now I think these things should be made 

 quite a conspicuous feature of our meetings. Let fruit growers 

 tell their failures and others will be seen to profit by them. 



We are not making our exhibitions as educational as they 

 should be. First of all, it should be borne in mind that here 

 in the State of Maine, the exhibition of the Maine State Pomo- 

 logical Society, is the type, so far as there is anything of that 

 kind, of perfection in the State of Maine along that line, and 

 you go round to the different agricultural fairs that are 

 held in the State of Maine and they are trying to imitate us. 

 Now some of those things it seems to me we are doing 

 wrong. They should be improved, and it is up to us to make 

 those improvements. But we are not making, at the same 

 time, our exhibits as good as they ought to be. It is not the 

 fault of the officers particularly, except that circumstances — I 

 will call it circumstances — have prevented us from appointing 

 some one in charge of these exhibitions along decorative lines 

 and perfection lines, if you please, to make the exhibitions bet- 

 ter and more attractive. 



I should be glad if we could have an expert come every year, 

 pay a man who knows how to make up a good exhibition ; then 

 let the officers of the Society do something else. It would 

 help us wonderfully and it would make our exhibition an 

 object of study and a pleasure to every one who comes here. 

 We are having it a little better done this year than ever before 

 Ijecause this year we have Mr. True to assist, and he in a very 

 quiet way has been to work down stairs and straightened out 

 a lot of things. 



