STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 91 



PUBLIC SESSION. 



The hall was crowded, this being the closing meeting of the cou- 

 •^'ention. Prof. George C. Purington, Principal of the Northern 

 Normal School, rendered a fine musical selection ; after which Mrs. 

 :Hattie Park Ke^'es, the gifted wife of Capt. Charles W. Ke3'es of 

 ithe Farmintrton Chronicle^ read the following essay : 



THE VALUE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES 

 TO THE FARMER. 



By Mrs. Hattie Park Keyes. 



The subject is so broad and invites thought in so many different 

 •directions that, in a brief article like this, one can hope to follow but 

 a few of the possible avenues of consideration, and these only for a 

 little way. It ma}' be trusted, however, that the candid and thought- 

 ful minds of those to whom this topic is introduced may work out 

 ■for themselves some ideas which, sooner or later, will be of some 

 advantage ; and I shall be, indeed, well pleased if calling attention 

 to this matter at this time may, in any degree, assist in the way of 

 greater enjoyment and a more remunerative income from a life on the 

 -farm . 



One of the great problems studied in agricultural gatherings in 

 ?Maine of late years is how to keep the bo3's — and it ma^' be added 

 ;girls. too — on the farm. The tendency has been so strong the past 

 thirty years to leave the farm for the workshop or the store, or, what 

 is as disastrous to the prosperity of our State, to leave the farms in 

 ;Maine for a farm, a ranch or a miner's camp in the West, that the 

 rural sections have suffered a serious decrease in population and, 

 'therewith, a great loss in the results of the labor which these runaway 

 sons of the farm would have performed had they remained on or near 

 the old homesteads. There is an old saying that times change and 

 we must change with them. This is true in the relative attractions 

 of farm and city life. In former times, when intercourse with the 

 city was less easy and frequent than now, when the opportunities it 

 offered to young people were far less varied and not so well known as at 

 Xhe present time, when the city streets possessed in much less degree 



