136 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



history of the "Little Turk," he was as ignorant as he was of King 

 Solomon's mines, or the the whereabouts of the Lost Pleiade. And 

 his knowledge of the life, character and busy labors of the codling 

 moth, and all the other tribes of creeping things, that make a fruit- 

 grower's life miserable, was equally extensive. 



The growing and production of small fruits, by transplanting 

 and cultivation, had not yet begun. Blackberries and raspberries 

 were known to grow in the woods and neglected fence rows, and he 

 who had most of them was regarded as the laziest man and producer 

 of the poorest farm crops. Strawberries, too, grew in the meadows, 

 but no one — so far as now remembered — thought of cultivating 

 them, much less of originating new varieties of these or, indeed, of 

 any of the small fruits. The first man he ever knew to grow straw- 

 berries in his garden, and to cultivate and care for them, was an 

 Englishman who resided near the village, about the years 1828 or 

 1830, and who had a patch of about two square rods in extent. The 

 fruit was rather superior in size to those usually found wild; but 

 whether they had been transplanted from the meadows or produced 

 from seed, he never learned. The young people would go out there 

 and eat of these strawberries, regarding the man as a crank for 

 transplanting them to his garden, when he could have them in the 

 meadows free of cost and labor. Possibly others at that early day, 

 unknown to the writer, were similarly engaged. At what period 

 Nicholas Longworth, of Cincinnati, first began the cultivation and 

 propagation of this and other small fruits, I am unable to say. I 

 had spent several years of early manhood about my native place, and 

 had emigrated west in 1836, before I heard of Longworth's straw- 

 berries. 



It would be interesting to inquire in what year and by whom the 

 small fruits were first grown, cultivated and propagated in the State 

 of Illinois, — certainly, I think, in the State, for I doubt if such a 

 thing had beeu practiced anywhere within its limits as a territory. 

 Probably, gentlemen present at this meeting can enlighten us on 

 this point ; or, perhaps, the files of the old American Fanner, the 

 Genesee Farmer, Albany Cultivator, or the earliest journals in the 

 West could inform us. There are, unfortunately, few of these to be 

 found. Apples and pears were grown in Illinois perhaps about as 

 early as anywhere else in America, having been brought by the early 

 French settlers. Rev. John M. Peck declared, more than half a 

 century ago, that he had, thirty years previously, eaten luscious fruit 

 from the second generation of those " glorious old trees " planted 

 about Kaskaskia and Cahokia in " Egypt." Unfortunately, all those 

 early writers use the term '' fruits " in mentioning these things. 

 They also use the term " trees," which leads us to conclude that they . 

 wrote of orchard fruits alone,— mostly apples and pears. Dr. John 

 A. Kennicott, also, in referring to the early fruits of Illinois (as 



