HORTICULTURE IN OREGON.

A paper read before the State Horticultural Society by ETHAN W. ALLEN.

To attempt to give in one address within the time allotted me anything like a complete history of the subject assigned me, is simply impossible, for while Oregon is in many respects comparatively a new State, yet in others she is an old one. Before the discovery of gold in California had turned the tide of immigration thitherward, the wonderful fertility of the Willamette Valley had been noised about in what was then the West-Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. During the year 1847 several thousand souls were added to Oregon's population, as were also many valuable acquisitions to household comforts and farm productions.

One can hardly realize in these days of steam and electricity what it then meant to make a trip from Iowa to Oregon. Now it takes about three days in a palace car; then it took six months of weary plodding with ox teams. Among the heroic souls that came to Oregon in 1847 was Henderson Lewelling, who was a resident of Southwestern Iowa, and who conceived the idea of transporting to Oregon a nursery on wheels. This idea he proceeded to put into execution by making two boxes 12 inches deep, and just wide and long enough to fill the wagon-bed. These he filled with a composite of earth and charcoal, in which he planted several hundred trees and shrubs; these were protected from the stock by a light framework fastened to the wagon-bed. That load was doubtless, for many reasons, the most difficult one to manage that ever crossed the plains; and yet it has been truly said, "that load of trees contained health, wealth, and comfort for the old pioneers of Oregon,' and it is doubtless true that that load of trees and shrubs brought more wealth to the State than any ship that ever entered the Columbia River. It was the mother of all our nurseries, and gave to Oregon a name and fame that she would never have had without it. These trees were planted at Milwaukie, six miles south of Portland, and the sale of fruit and grafts from them brought wealth to the enterprising planter. The great immigration to California, caused by the discovery of gold, created a market for every eatable, and the "big red apples" from Oregon were sold at enormous prices to miners and others.

Many orchards were set out by the pioneer emigrants, and some of the trees planted at that early period are still in vigorous bearing.

Fruit culture, especially the apple, proved very profitable, the limited products of those times selling at fancy prices.

Several persons made small fortunes from fruit raising, but few adopted it as an exclusive pursuit. The high prices then obtained gave a great impetus to the planting of orchards; but when these came into full bearing, the increase of supply brought prices down. California being the only market available, the supply very soon exceeded the demand, the result of which was that a general feeling of carelessness permeated the fruit-growers of Oregon, and but little attention was paid to taking proper care of the orchards or the enormous crops they produced. The fruit yield in the Willamette Valley alone has been estimated to average 1,000,300 bushels per

annum.

Since the completion of the three transcontinental lines of railroads that now traverse her fertile valleys, bringing as it were the great fruit markets of the East to our very door, a new impetus has been given to fruit-growing, and the near future bids fair to see Oregon stand again at the head of the list as the greatest fruit-producing State in the Union.

It may be profitable for us to consider briefly some of the conditions that now affect us, and what is necessary to be done in order to accomplish this most desirable result. The work of the Forticulturist can be traced back to a very early period in the history of the world, for we read in the eighth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed, with instruction to dress it and keep it"; therefore we see at this early day in the world's history was a partnership formed between God the Creator and man the creature, in that while God gave to man the orchard, yet the responsibility of its care and treatment, upon which was based its success, devolved upon man. The partnership thus formed at that early period in the world's history has never been dissolved, and today those who succeed in horticulture must comply with the requirements that were demanded of those to whom was entrusted the first orchard in Eden. When one looks over the products of the farm and orchard as grown in Oregon, one is led to believe that here doth combine

The climate, the soil, and the elements, all

To reward with full measure the husbandman's toil;

And whispered it is, with semblance of truth,

That the Garden of Eden, the place of man's birth,
Where Adam and Eve, serpent, apple, and all,

Brought mankind to sin, through their own wicked fall,
Was located in this wonderful land,

Where are grown these products so grand,

That one is led to exclaim, in the greatest of freedom,

That no better could have been grown in the Garden of Eden; Such apples and peaches, such cherries and pear,

Such wheat, oats, and barley were not excelled there.

And to live in this our Oregon is much better than to have lived in the garden of our forefathers; but it is well enough to understand that with the inhabitants of Oregon, as was the case with our first parents, rest great responsibilities; and while your future residence here may not depend upon whether you eat of the fruit of a certain tree or not, yet the success of your efforts in horticulture here does and will continue to depend upon obedience to those great laws of God, written in the volume of Nature, and to diligently study that volume is an essential qualification of the horticulturist. In the study of this volume of Nature, we find that she readily responds to the magic touch of the intelligent and painstaking husbandman. The condition of society in a savage or uneducated state is generally migratory; subsisting upon the natural products of the forest and stream, or at best upon the flocks. and herds. As man increases in the knowledge of Nature's laws, he at once realizes that to be benefited by the productions of Nature, he must make use of those means that will enable these natural laws to exercise the full powers secreted within them. In accomplishment of this, man must not only use his hands, but his head also. When a boy upon the farm, I remember the trite saying of an old and most successful farmer, who lived close by, "that a little knowledge was better than hard work." This is as true on the farm as in all other avocations in life. The ground must be prepared with labor and the tree must be planted with intelligent care. Here is exercise for the body and food for the mind; thus the mind is expanded and the body strengthened. Hence the man is benefited, and society, of which he forms a part, is correspondingly improved. No labor that man can engage in tends more to civilize, educate, and ennoble mankind than does horticulture.

The highest types of civilization have ever been found connected with the highest attainment in horticulture. The highest type of this that has ever been produced was doubtless found in that Garden heretofore referred to, occupied by our first parents. All things went well with them until a pest got into the orchard; and while there seems to have been a liberal use of concentrated lye and sulphur, still the evil was accomplished, and the downward tendency of horticulture was inaugurated; and from that day until the present the orchardist has had to battle with this same orchard pest that was introduced in Eden, although not appearing in these

latter days in the form of a serpent, but in that of the Aphis, the Codlin Moth, the San José Scale, and a host of other pestiferous insects. One in view of this has written :

"They come, the merry insect train,
The borers and the dippers;
The little gnats waltz in again,
And eke the gallinippers;
The vast colored ants, the flies
That tittilate our features;
The bee, with penetrating ties,
And sundry sundried creatures;

The weevil and the cutworm now
Do polish up their armor;

The chinchbug makes his vernal bow

In ambush for the farmer;

The weird curculio setteth out

To mad the fruit tree tillers,

And in each garden lurk about

Ten billion caterpillars.'

Thus it is that those who dwell in this Garden of Eden of the nineteenth century-the valleys of Oregon-have been made to realize in these latter years that this army of pestiferous insects have found lodgment in our orchards through the subtle and oily tongue of the old man of Eden, in the form and garb of the treepeddler, who, as the representative of some far away nursery, has beguiled some of our people with his gorgeous pictures into buying just a few of his extra choice varieties; and with these have come the pestiferous insects that now infest nearly if not every orchard in Oregon. This condition of affairs has brought the observant ones to realize that from this on, horticulture, if successful in Oregon as elsewhere, must be conducted on thorough business principles; and it may not be out of place on this occasion to briefly consider a few of the fundamental ones essential to success.

First of these is the preparation of the ground. The successful orchardist will realize that in this is the foundation upon which to a large extent the future of the orchard will depend.

If the ground to be planted has not a natural under drainage, it should be drained by the use of drain tiles. Wet, cold feet have doubtless been the cause of more failure in orchard planting in Oregon than all other causes combined. This is especially true of the prune and the peach. After the under drainage comes deep plowing, so that ample provision shall be made for plenty of good deep root growth. After the ground has been thoroughly prepared comes the planting. I shall not attempt to give any advice here relative

to the selections to be made in the way of kinds and varieties, only to say that one should study well the soil and location, and make such selections as will succeed best in the location selected. When this is determined upon, then buy the very best trees possible regardless of price. The cheap tree is most likely to be the dear one in the end. Good, thrifty, healthy trees with good roots and free from insect pests are the ones to buy, and no others should be planted under any circumstances. I desire to emphasize free from insect pests, for a tree infested with Woolly Aphis or San José Scale should be shunned as would be a horse with the glanders or cattle with the tuberculosis.

After the orchard is planted, look after it with the same care and attention that you would a prize herd of Jersey cattle, or a prize acre of potatoes. See that nothing comes in contract with the trees that will in any way mar or injure them. Give them thorough cultivation, and allow nothing to grow among them that will call for a division of the ground's nutriment. Keep the trees well pruned, and above all thoroughly cleansed from all insects destructive to tree or fruit: A first-class spray pump, a good plow, the latest improved cultivator, and a sharp pruning-knife, are as essential to success in fruit-growing as are the plow, seeder, harvester, mower, and thresher in successful farming. The man that would attempt to carry on one of the large farms in the Willamette Valley by the use of the wooden mold-board plow, the cradle, the scythe, and the flail, would be regarded as a relic of the almost forgotten past, and a fit subject for the asylum. Yet there are hundreds of men in this same Willamette Valley—and I doubt not some of you may have seen some of them-that are trying to make a success in horticulture by the use of principles and methods that are as obsolete as is the wooden mold-board plow.

The following from the Lamentations of the Prophet Joel, written eight hundred years before Christ, sounds as if it might apply to some of the horticulturists of the Willamette Valley: "Be ye ashamed, ye husbandman; the vine is dried up and the fig tree languisheth, the pomegranate tree also, and the apple tree; even all the trees of the field are withered." It's barely possible that the horticulturist of that day had been treated to a combined dose of the San José Scale and the Woolly Aphis, as have some in our own valley. I sometimes think that it would perhaps be better for the agriculturist and horticulturist, if she had done less, so that those engaged in these, the grandest of all occupations, might not rest down so heavily upon her bounty.

The more study I give to the great natural advantages that this Oregon of ours possesses in the line of horticulture, the more I am