40 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



We need more enthusiastic men and women to follow up these 

 studies, and the more we can encourage our people to investigate the 

 various conditions of plant life, the more useful we may become in 

 our chosen field of labor. Iiet us offer more premiums for wild 

 flowers, but let us insist as a first condition that the specimens, 

 whether green or dried, shall be correctly named according to some 

 standard authority. There may not be many who would take part 

 in such a competition, but I am confident the children would enjoy 

 the study, and it was never of greater importance than in the pres- 

 ent condition of fruit and flower culture. 



The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is one of the most active 

 organizations of its class in this country. This society has a Window 

 Gardening Committee that is doing good work in teaching children to 

 care for simple plants that will thrive in windows, holding exhibi- 

 tions and offering prizes. As a further stimulus, the committee will 

 distribute free a pamphlet on the cultivation of house plants, giving 

 directions for their growing and also lists of wild flowers in the 

 vicinity of Boston. 



It would be a pleasure if our society could do the same kind of 

 work in Maine. Our people attend the fairs by the thousand and 

 are enraptured by the display of flowers. They examine them with 

 the closest scrutiny, to find out that they are all of foreign origin, 

 hardly one among the entire collection that grows in its native soil. 

 To obtain them in perfection is often diflicult, and in our enthusiasm 

 to cultivate rare plants we forget that Maine has floral beauties of 

 rare merit. 



It is an interesting diversion to look over the beautiful catalogues 

 issued annually by the florists in our country. Even the French 

 rose growers do not approach them in elaborate illustrations. They 

 are so finely printed and gotten up it is really strange more people 

 do not want them. But aside from this the most remarkable attrac- 

 tion to me is the evidence all the way through the pages of the 

 immense results accomplished by the skill of the horticulturist. 

 Every page shows new varieties of vegetables or flowers. Some of 

 them may be inferior to the parent plants from which they origi- 

 nated, but many of them are vastly superior. The rose, the most 

 beautiful of flowers, is one of the most extensive in varieties. The 

 florists, by crossing different varieties, have produced marvels of 

 beauty. The asters afford another illustration of new varieties, 

 many of the later ones being so much superior to the oiginals that 



