64 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIEXr. 



BEST VARIETIES DETERMINED BY EXPERIENCE. 



There are thousands of varieties of apples and pears, known and 

 described in Dowuing's great worlv on "•Fruit and Fruit Trees of 

 America." Strange as it ma}' seem, a large part of the trees planted 

 in Maine have been grown in nurseries outside of the State, and sold 

 to our farmers by the tree agent. The model tree agent, as you all 

 know, is a well-dressed gentleman of fluent speech, and, equipped 

 with his beautifully-colored plates of fruit, he has been known, even 

 in our own county, to sell crab apple trees by the dozen to a single 

 farmer. The best fruit growers in the State have long ago learned 

 that many of the apples known to be good in New York State, and 

 farther south, are worthless here in Maine ; and the words of these 

 fruit growers recorded in the reports of the Society, have kept many 

 a man from buying inferior varieties. I remember attending an ex- 

 hibition of fruit not long since where our friend Bennoch had a re- 

 markably fine display of apples consisting of 114 named varieties. 

 I asked him how man}' were of value in Maine, and he replied, "Not 

 more than a dozen." The Society has repeatedly said to the farm- 

 ers of Maine, "too many varieties for profit." At the same time it 

 has encouraged people to provide for home use the best tliey could 

 raise. Tlie other day one of our farmers told me he sent to a nur- 

 sery-man for a hundred Tompkins King stock for his orchard ; the 

 nurseryman wrote him back advising him to set a ditfcrent variety, 

 but one which has no market reputation at all, while the King is 

 near the highest in the markets. The fruit growers of Maine who 

 have read and studied the doings of our Society, or who have at- 

 tended its meetings, know better than to plant new and untried va- 

 rieties for profit. The frequent fruit lists published by the Society 

 are of great value to our fruit interests, and show what fruits are 

 successful in Maine. My own notion is that we should revise this 

 annuall}', and if the catalogue could be classified under such titles 

 as "Apples for Family Use," "Apples for Market," etc., it would 

 aid some of us very much in understanding more fully the facts we 

 want to learn from it. 



A lecture recently delivered before the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society on the "Degeneracy of Fruit and Vegetables" said upon 

 this subject : 



"Pears are comparatively' short-lived in southern climates, and va- 

 rieties imported from France to this country are not as a rule long- 



