Mr. HARRIS. Yes; I think a good many pastures in New

England do.
QUESTION.

What inducement is there for a man to go into sheep husbandry, with the present price of wool?

Mr. HARRIS. You mustn't place too much stress upon wool at present; mutton brings a good price, and wool is high sometimes.

The CHAIR. I do a little in the sheep business; it is one of the side issues. I do not know that it has been very profitable, one year with another. Mr. Harris is in one line of business, and he has talked to you about another. He doesn't tell you about those high-priced sheep he is going to get money from.

Mr. Harris talked about keeping his sheep in open sheds. He has been in the business a great many years and has many valuable sheep, and he has already made a success of it. My experience has been that sheep should not be out in the open; and if I got lambs that came in December or January, I never for a moment should think of having them come in an open shed.

Mr. C. D. RICHARDSON (of West Brookfield). We have kept over 40 sheep in the same pasture for years, and I do not know when we have had a better flock than at present. I have not been in the habit of feeding grain, but give skim milk. I find this brings the lambs along in good shape.

AFTERNOON SESSION.

The meeting was called to order at 2 P.M. by Secretary Ellsworth, who introduced Mr. John Bursley of West Barnstable as the presiding officer of the afternoon.

The CHAIR. It is a pleasure, I assure you, to be present with those who are interested in agriculture. Your presence here this afternoon assures me that you are interested.

I take pleasure in introducing to you Prof. F. C. Sears, professor of pomology at our Agricultural College, who will talk to you on "The planting of a commercial orchard in Massachusetts."

Professor SEARS. It is my usual custom to talk offhand,

or to talk from notes.

I usually find it easier to get at the subject in that way, but I find you require a prepared paper. There is no section of the country where the people are better able to buy good fruit than right here in Massachusetts, but to sell that fruit at the right price we must overcome the reputation that Massachusetts fruit unfortunately has. Last year in the experimental orchard we had some fine Baldwins and Greenings. We had a man pack them in boxes, and sent them to Boston at considerable expense, some 40 or more boxes. The salesman went to eight or ten high-class fruit stores with the fruit. They asked where it came from, and when told it came from western Massachusetts, they did not want it. They said their customers wanted Oregon apples, because then they knew what they were getting. A party told me this year that he had no difficulty in disposing of all his Baldwins at $5 per barrel. He had overcome the fact that he lived in Massachusetts. Every one can start out and make as good a reputation as this man. It is the man sending in the poorly packed apples who brings the market down.

In Nova Scotia ten or a dozen of the best growers averaged for four or five years, which allows for the off years, a profit from $14 up to $20 per acre on their orchards. I do not believe there is much land here in Massachusetts which yields a value of $10. There is no reason why we cannot make as good a profit as they do there. They did not sell at extremely high prices, and yet they made an unusually good profit.

THE PLANTING OF A COMMERCIAL ORCHARD IN MASSACHUSETTS.

BY PROF. F. C. SEARS, AMHERST, MASS.

I presume it will come as a surprise to most of you when I say that I propose to make my own experience the basis of my remarks to you this afternoon, because a "professor is not supposed to have experiences, but is expected to speak from a purely theoretical standpoint. However, perhaps some of those present are aware that the past spring Professor Waugh and I started a commercial orchard in South Amherst, a few miles from the Agricultural College, and it is about our work in this orchard and the problems which we have encountered and solved that I want to tell you. I trust you will pardon the personal pronouns that I shall be obliged to use, for, when all is said and done, it is what we have ourselves actually done, not what we have seen others do, or think ought to be done, which gives our opinion weight.

Stated briefly, our undertaking is as follows: we have purchased 150 acres of land, upon which we set the past spring some 5,500 trees, — apple, peach and plum, and we have ordered for setting the coming spring about 8,000 trees. Now, I mention this not to boast of the size of our project, but that you may have an idea at the start of what we have done and are planning to do; for while you may question our judgment, you will at least see that we are willing to take our own prescriptions, which is not always the case when doctors prescribe.

To begin with, may I suggest one or two considerations. which led us to go into commercial orcharding, and to undertake it on the lines we have adopted. Of course we have both of us always had a strong belief in the business of grow

ing fruit, else we should not have adopted horticulture as a profession; and personally I believe that there is no better country in the world than right here in Massachusetts in which to engage in the business.

In the first place, Massachusetts can grow fruit of the very highest quality. We can't grow as good Ben Davis as they can in Colorado and Missouri (and personally I wish that we would stop trying to), but no country in the world can beat us on Baldwins and Greenings and Hubbardstons and a dozen other similar varieties, if we will only take care of our orchards. And while in the past anything has sold that was red and had the shape of an apple, yet as competition increases, and as people become educated up to an appreciation of what an apple ought to be, quality is going to count more and more, and Massachusetts will have more and more advantage, if she will only take it.

In the second place, we are right in the midst of the best markets in the world. There are 23,000,000 people within a radius of 300 miles from the spot where we now stand, and no equal number of people anywhere on the globe has a larger proportion who spend money freely for just such necessary luxuries as fruit.

But this nearness to markets is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is an advantage, because we can get our fruit to market cheaply and quickly, and when we come to compete with Oregon, we ought to have the difference in freight and express as a lever on our side. But it is also a disadvantage, because we are so close to those markets that every man in Massachusetts who has a barrel of windfall apples sends them to market, in the hope of getting something for them; and though he usually realizes on this hope, yet sometimes he doesn't, and in any case, whether he gets anything out of it or not, he gives a "black eye" to Massachusetts fruit in general which it is often difficult to overcome. One of our greatest needs at the present time is to devise some scheme to keep poor fruit out of the market. Of course the ideal remedy for this is not to grow poor fruit, but until we arrive there, what are we to do?

In the third place, we took up orcharding on the scale on

which we did, because we believed that that was the way to make it pay. I have repeatedly said, and I want to take this occasion to say again, that I do not believe fruit growing in Massachusetts could be given a greater impetus than by inducing 50 or 100 men throughout the State to plant from 10 to 100 acres of orchard. The trouble with our orcharding is, that it is usually a mere side issue to the general farm work. As Professor Bailey has said, "Men do not grow their crops of apples, they discover them." But when men go into the business of orcharding more largely, making it their principal line of work, then the orchard becomes an object of pride and care; it is no longer compelled to compete with the cows and the bugs and the hay crop, but is sprayed and cultivated and pruned and fertilized for its own sake. But in urging this desirability of large-sized plantations I wish it distinctly understood that I am well aware that it is sometimes overdone, that men plant out acres of orchard where they should plant square rods. But for every orchard that is neglected because it is too large, there are hundreds which are neglected because they are too small. It is very difficult for any man to become enthusiastic over a dozen Baldwin trees up in the back pasture, which every alternate year give a few barrels of wormy apples; it is impossible not to become enthusiastic over a 10-acre orchard which is every year the best paying part of the farm operations.

I might go on to cite cases where men have made comfortable livings out of small orchards and have become well to do with larger ones; for it has certainly been my observation that in those sections where orcharding flourished as a business, where, as some one has said, it is an industry and not merely an incident, - there you will find the most prosperous farmers and the best farm homes. I say I might go on to discuss this phase of the question, but I shall pass that over and proceed with the real subject which I want to discuss with you, the planting of a commercial orchard; or shall I make it personal, and say, the planting of our commercial orchard?

And first just a word in regard to the soil conditions which confronted us; for in any orchard proposition this is