bacco, for the reason that the grower, knowing the requirements of the plant, manures it very highly, as he easily can, and the soil, instead of being exhausted from year to year, is actually growing richer. Increasing the hay crop, therefore, notwithstanding its cost, enables the farmer to keep more stock in such a manner as to make more manure, and more manure enables him to keep up the fertility of the land. We are not surprised, therefore, to find the geographical distribution of the crop as returned in 1850 as follows: The north produced 9,473,605 tons, valued at $94,736,050; the west produced 3,227,253 tons, valued at $32,272,530; the south produced 1,137,784 tons, valued at $11,377,846. There can be no reasonable doubt that the quality of hay made now, over that usually made in former times in this country, has been improved, to say nothing more of the vastly improved facilities for harvesting it. More correct ideas are entertained of the extent and mode of curing it, and the quality is improved in proportion as a higher knowledge is brought to bear upon it. THE CULTURE OF FRUIT. The establishment of state and county agricultural societies, and of stated exhibitions, in which the products of the orchard and the garden had a prominent place, introduced a new era in the culture of fruit. The early settlers made some attempts to introduce apples and pears, some bringing with them the seeds of these fruits, with the supposition, no doubt, that they should have the like again. cultivated at all, as a part of the produce of the farm, till a comparatively recent date. At the close of the Revolution, and, in fact, at the end of the last century, it would have been impossible to have found in the whole country the number and varieties of good fruits which might now be found in a single good farming town. There were orchards of seedling apples, and many of them were far better than none, but that is nearly all that can be said for them. They were raised chiefly for the making of cider. Most of the favorite varieties of the present day had then no existence; and if any very superior apple had existed in any isolated locality, it could not, from the very nature of things, have become generally known and appreciated, for, as we have seen, the barriers which separated the rural population of that day were so great as often to leave them in ignorance of what was passing, even in a neighboring town. A seedling equal to the Baldwin apple might have remained unknown twenty miles off from the beginning to the end of the last century. Apples were apples, and all apples were fit to make cider, and that was enough. It was regarded as absurd for any but a young man to set out trees; and when a man of seventy began to plant an orchard, the idea was so ludicrous as to subject him to the ridicule of the whole neighborhood. over thirty millions of dollars a year, and is fast growing to be one of the most important products of the country, the annual sales numbering hundreds of thousands of barrels. But, during the first quarter of the pres ent century, many large orchards were planted in different parts of the country, still with particular reference to the production of cider. The fruit crop of the country was of so little importance as not to have been thought worthy of a place in the collecThe first apples raised in this country tion of our national statistics, even so late were, probably, from trees planted on Gov-as 1830; now it amounts to considerably ernor's Island, in the harbor of Boston, from which, on the 10th of October, 1639, ten fair pippins were brought, "there being not one apple or pear tree planted in any part of the country, but upon that island." Governor Endicott had on his farm in Salem, now in Danvers, in 1640, the first nursery of young fruit trees that was ever planted in this country; and it is related that he sold five hundred apple trees for two hundred and fifty acres of land, or at the rate of two trees for an acre-a good bargain for the purchaser, if he took good care of his trees. But the cultivation of fruit was extremely rare in the early history of the country. Indeed, it could hardly be said to have been The oldest horticultural society in the United States was founded only about thirty years ago (1829). For some years such associations were few and feeble, on account of the want of sufficient public interest in the subject. Fruit of the choice varieties was a luxury which could be enjoyed only by the wealthy. Now there is scarcely a cottage in a country town or village which has not its grape vines, or its apple or pear trees. The public no longer ridicule the man who probably, than it ever was before. The two or three preceding years were comparatively bad fruit years, and in the meantime thousands of young trees have come into bearing which never bore before. The crop of 1860 is, therefore, wonderfully large, and of unsurpassed excellence. plants choice trees, with the hope of enjoy- fruit for 1860 is larger, by 200 per cent., ing their fruit. Modern science, in this direction, secures speedy returns. The American Pomological Society was established in 1848, and since then kindred societies have been established in several of the states, and are exerting no small degree of influence. It is scarcely twenty-five years since two or three small nurseries in the vicinity of our large cities, occupying not over five hundred acres in the whole country, supplied the wants of the United States and the Canadas. Now there exist more than a thousand nurseries; and in one county of New York alone-that of Monroe there are between three and four thousand acres, producing every year more than $500,000 worth of trees; while there are sold every year, in the whole country, from fifteen to twenty millions of trees, with a value of $5,000,000. It is estimated that the nurseries of Onondaga, and the neighboring counties of New York, contain at this moment at least fifty millions of trees for sale. These figures give but an inadequate idea of the actual present extent of this great business of the country, but they are sufficient to indicate the wide-spread interest in the cultivation of fruit among the people. The climate of the southern states has often been stated to be unfavorable to the growth of our common staple fruits, except peaches, figs, oranges, and the like; but experience has shown that it is not so. There is one orchard in Mississippi of 15,000 pear trees, another in Georgia of 9,500; and in other sections, where the effort has been made, success has almost invariably attended it. It is true, the pomology of the south is in many respects peculiar. The mistake has been in selecting northern varieties, instead of seedlings of the south and other native varieties, many of which are found to exist, and to be superior in size, flavor, and beauty, while in keeping qualities they are not inferior to good northern varieties. The south can, therefore, raise apples in large quantities, and of a very high quality, by the selection and proper cultivation of varieties adapted to its soil and climate. The few earnest and intelligent pomologists It is a gratifying fact that our native fruits who have had long experience there, rank are appreciated as they deserve. Of the the apple as the surest and most reliable of thirty-six varieties of apples recommended all fruits except the grape. So far, comparby the American Pomological Society for atively little attention has been given to the cultivation, thirty are natives; of the culture of the apple and the pear by the fourteen varieties of plums, ten are natives; mass of southern planters; partly, no doubt, and so are more than half the pears and all from an impression that such fruits were not of the strawberries. It is not many years suited to that locality; but the experience since all the strawberries in our markets of the most intelligent horticulturists in grew wild and were brought from the fields, that part of the country has, I think, fully when not a single variety had been produced established its practicability, especially for by hybridization in America. Last year a the native southern winter varieties. And single cultivator in Massachusetts grew them so of the pear. Very many of the favorite at the rate of 160 bushels per acre, and sold varieties at the north grow and bear well at them at the rate of $1,300 per acre; while the south, either as standards or dwarfs, in others, in Connecticut and other states, did a deep, mellow, well tilled soil, care being even better than that, from seedling varieties. taken to train the top of the tree low and The fruit crop of Massachusetts was officially spreading, so as to shield the trunk and the returned in 1845 at $744,000; while in root from the too fierce rays of the sun. 1855 it amounted to $1,300,000; and in And as to the peach, it is at home at the 1860 to upward of $2,000,000; and the in-south, and grows in the highest degree of crease in many other parts of the country perfection. One grower in that part of the has been in a similar or even greater propor-country sends north from seven to ten tion. In the fall and winter of 1858-59, thousand dollars worth of peaches every there were exported from the port of Bos- year before they are ripe in the middle ton alone no less than 120,000 barrels of states. apples, mostly Baldwins. The product of Now if such are known to be the results of only ten, fifteen, and twenty years of enterprise in this branch of rural economy, what may we not anticipate when the vast number of young trees planted in the middle and eastern states within the last five years, come into bearing? If any one is disposed to feel disheartened at the prospect of sales, or fear the market will be glutted, let him take courage in the fact that the demand is ever on the increase, not only from the multiplication of consumers, but from the fact that there is a growing conviction that fruit is the most healthful food. The exportation of fruits, particularly of apples, is rapidly increasing. But that the present comparative abundance has not diminished the profits of fruit-growing, the Fruit-Growers' Society of Western New York state through a committee that three white Doyenné pear-trees, owned by Mr. Phinney, of Canandaigua, one of them small, produce annually from $50 to $60 worth of fine fruit, while another of the same variety, in the same place, seventy years old, has not failed of a good crop for forty years, and has averaged twenty bushels a year for twenty years, which have been sold on the tree for $60 a year. This one tree has produced for the New York market $3,750 worth of pears. Three large trees of the same kind, owned by another individual, yielded in 1854 eleven barrels, which sold for $137. Then, too, we are to include the luxuriant growth of fruits in California, now becoming celebrated as a fruit-growing region. Five years ago the apple-trees in that state scarcely numbered a hundred thousand; now, in 1860, there are more than a million trees in bearing. Peach-trees then numbered only a hundred and seventy thousand; now, there are more than a million and a half. Peartrees have increased in five years from twenty thousand to three hundred thousand; apricots, from four thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand trees; plums, from ten thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand; and grape vines, from three hundred thousand in 1855, to eight millions in 1860! The number of vines more than doubled in two years from 1856 to 1858. A popular writer says the growth on the grape-vines the last year would make one long green creeper that would reach from San Francisco clear across the continent, and then over the sea to England. "Who knows," says he, "but what Englishmen will yet suck their wines from California cellars? At the rate we are going on, somebody has got a great deal of winedrinking to do, to use up the California production of ten years hence. But people must make up their minds, or their palates, to like still wines that are at once fiery and sour, if they intend to patronize California vineyards, and rejoice in the plenty and cheapness of our products; for our grapes insist on being sweeter than the best grapes of which foreign wines are made. They contain 20 per cent. of sugar against 13 11-100 per cent. in foreign-grown specimens, while the proportion of free acid is much less. As a consequence, there is 15 per cent. of alcohol in our light wine, which is double what is detected in the European light wines, and nearly as much as is contained in the stronger ports, sherries, and Madeiras." The value of the grape crop two years ago (1858), amounted to $1,000,000, and it amounts now, probably, to over $8,000,000. The culture of the vine in California is very simple, and gives astonishing profits. An acre in ordinary calculation is enough for a thousand vines; and each vine in full bearing will produce a gallon of wine. The average of well-managed vineyards is often much greater, and two or three gallons to a vine is no uncommon product. A good man, with a horse and plough, and at work only about eight days in the year, can tend from eight to ten acres of vines. The grape flourishes in all parts of California, but the counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and San Diego are, perhaps, the most noted, though the Napa valley, and many other localities, are about equally suited to it. The capabilities of the three counties above named, for the production of the grape, are ascertained to be equal to 100,000,000 vines, or more than 100,000,000 gallons of wine a year! About 650 vessels leave the Mediterranean for this country every year, loaded with figs, lemons, oranges, limes, almonds, and the products of the vine, the whole amounting to about seven and a quarter millions of dollars. Time will show that California can easily produce all these products of an equal quality, and in abundance sufficient to supply the whole country, and still have a surplus for her own consumption. That this statement is by no means extravagant, is evident from the fact that the growth of the grape during the last three years surpasses any thing ever known in the most highly |