STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 2 7 



it IS time, yon have done but little towards a flourisliing orchard, 

 since the price of a good orchard like the price of liberty, is 

 "eternal vigilance"; but it is equally true, that if you do not fol- 

 low this precept your orchard will be a failure from the start, and 

 no amount of after care, culture and thought can possibly make 

 a success of it. 



Let us remember, too, that the climate of Maine is a hard climate, 

 and the soil in general a hard soil ; that we produce hardy horses, 

 hardy cattle and hardy men and women, too, and that the fruits 

 adapted to our State are the hardy varieties. 



The fruit that flourishes best in Maine is the apple. This is for- 

 tunate, for the apple is the most valuable and important of fruits. 

 Whether we regard the amount and value of the crop, the facility 

 with which it is raised, the extensive portion of the globe adapted 

 to its culture, its fitness for transpoi'tation, the length of time it 

 may be kept, or the variety of uses to which it is put, the apple 

 stands forth among fruits like iron among metals — King. 



From the earliest times the apple has held this proud position. 

 Surely nothing but an apple could have enticed mother Eve to her 

 ruin. It was a golden apple, inscribed "To the Fairest," that 

 the goddess Discord threw into the banquet of the gods, and this 

 apple was the cause of dissensions between Juno, Minerva and 

 Venus, which shook high Heaven ; hence the Trojan war, the 

 destruction of Troy, and those immortal poems the lUiad and the 

 Odyssey. And when great Jove, father of gods and men, wedded 

 Juno, Queen of Heaven, Tellus goddess of the Earth, brought the 

 choicest product of our world to the nuptials, as a wedding gift — 

 and this choicest gift of Earth was what ? — branches bearing the 

 golden apples of Hesperides. 



The labor question is one of prime importance to the farmers of 

 Maine. Intelligent, reliable labor at fair wages is one of the 

 greatest needs on the farms of our State. Farmers of Maine, is 

 there anything more difficult to obtain than good help in the house, 

 or a good hand in the field, at wages you can afford to pay, or for 

 that matter, even at wages you cannot afford to pay ? Why, a 

 young farmer said to me, the other day, that it was not half as 

 hard to get a wife as it was to get a good servant girl. 



The inventive genius of America which has produced our im- 

 proved agricultural implements, helps us in part out of this diflS- 

 culty. And our mowing, reaping and threshing machines, our 

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