60 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



when preserved is very fine. It is too sour for eating, but for cook- 

 ing, is just what we need. I don't think it worth while to waste 

 time and sugar on such fruit as Chickasaw and Miner. 



EEPORT OF AD-INTERIM COMMITTEE FOR CENTRAL 



ILLINOIS. 

 BY C. X. DENNIS, HAMILTON. 



Left Hamilton in the afternoon of May 22d, in response to a 

 telegram from (jrriggsville, in company with A. C. Hammond. 

 Crops were promising along our route. We were met at the depot by 

 Mr. Richard Perry and conducted to an excellent stopping-place 

 previously provided by him. On the morning of the 23d, Mr Gid- 

 son Cadwell provided a team in which himself, Mr. Frank Cadwell, 

 Mr. Richard Perry, Mr. William Hovey, Secretary A, C. Hammond 

 and myself started on a trip of inspection of some of the many 

 orchards of the neighborhood, first visiting the fruithouse of Mr. 

 William Hovey, a large brick structure, eighty or one hundred feet 

 long by twenty-five ur thirty wide, divided into two stories, with a 

 filled space overhead and hollow walls, — should presume a good 

 place to temporarily store apples, but not sufficiently provided for 

 protection from heat or cold. Next, passing through his orchard, we 

 found the mistake frequently seen of too close planting. Irees 

 twenty-eight feet apart, with low heads and only a portion of which 

 had been trimmed, in the other portions it was necessary to raise 

 limbs and turn from side to side to walk through. There was but 

 very little fruit, and canker worms devastating the foliage. That the 

 orchard, which was on good ground, will prove an entire failure, 

 unless thinned, viz: cutting out part and trimming, is my prediction. 



Passing on by several smaller orchards, all looking fairly healthy 

 as also does a smaller one of Mr. Hovey's, we came to the 160-acre 

 orchard of Frank Cadwell. Here is a curiosity, every degree of incli- 

 nation from perfectly flat to so steep that a team cannot get up or 

 down, sloping to every point of the compass, with very many kinds 

 of apples. But Ben Davis and Willow Twig in excess of others. 

 Mr. Cadwell says, if replanting it, he would set Ben Davis, Willow 

 Twig and Rome Beauty entirely. 



In the afternoon of the 23d we met with some of the horticul- 

 turally inclined and they re-organized the Griggsville Horticultural 

 Society, with Richard JPerry, for President; Frank Cadwell, Vice- 

 President; Robert Allen, Secretary and James Morrison. Treasurer. 

 And I noticed that in the report of their last meeting, 1877, 

 apples were reported from one-fourth to one-eighth crop. This 

 Society was formed, February 16th, 1867 and called Horticultural 

 Society of Pike County. 



