46 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETt. 



most central body of water in the State, is within an hour's drive 

 of these villages. We wish you could come here in beautiful 

 October, and ride northward on the railroad through the towns of 

 Abbot, Blanchard and Shirley, to Greenville. You would find 

 scenery beautiful to behold. Then take the Canadian Pacific Rail- 

 road at the latter place and go eastward across the county, skirting 

 the rugged and precipitous southern side of Boarstone mountain, 

 crossing the enormous iron trestles of Wilson and Onawa, looking 

 down into the tree tops of hundreds of acres of variegated forest 

 and over the waters of placid lakelets, go on to Henderson junction 

 in the town of Brownville, and up to the ore mountain and Silver 

 lake at Katahdin Iron AVorks. Into Silver lake flows a rapid 

 stream called the Gulf stream, with its tributary called the Gulch, 

 which runs through miles of true canon, said to be one of the 

 finest examples of real canon, on a moderate scale, this side of the 

 Rocky mountains. 



This county, after losing sixty townships to Aroostook in 1844, 

 is seven townships wide and sixteen townships long, or 3,780 square 

 miles in area. It would make a whole state like Delaware, another 

 the size of Rhode Island, and have townships enough left to make 

 an ordinary sized county as counties average. Only about twenty 

 townships, however, of this great area is settled, the rest is wilder- 

 ness. These arr; some of the physical features of our county you 

 would enjoy seeing in October, which month is also, in this region, 

 the month for gathering and storing the apple, and brings us back 

 to the primary object of this meeting. 



Fruit growing ie a pleasant and remunerative business, and the use 

 of a succession of fruits in the family is not only agreeable but 

 decidedly beneficial and healthful. 



Only exceeded by the pleasure derived from the actual work in 

 caring for the trees of the apple orchard, is that to be had in view- 

 ing the fruition of that labor at the exhibitions of the fruit itself, 

 when the long tables are covered with red, yellow and multicolored 

 apples. 



I have visited exhibitions of fruit of the American Fomological 

 Society at Boston and at Philadelphia, and World's Fairs at Phila- 

 delphia and Chicago, but I have never seen finer displays of apples 

 than I have seen in years past at the exhibitions of this Society. 



I want to congratulate the Society on having attained its majority. 

 It has safely passed the perils of infancy and youth, the often 



