bTATE HORTICUI/IUKAL SOCIETY. 9 



County, and from the appearance of our fruit I despaired of suc- 

 cess, but I found plenty in the southwest where there is no clay 

 sub-soil. Of course the difference in varieties is also to be taken 

 into account. It is not climate so much as it is soil that affects 

 the orchards. The Bellflower does well on sandy formation, 

 but on the clays it is worthless. 



Mr. Pearson — Will some one tell me whether the orchard pays 

 or not ? 



Mr. Webster — Yes sir, it pays down in our country. From 

 Centralia, apples are shipped by the hundreds of car loads. Some 

 have made this year from their orchards from $150 to $200 per 

 acre. In some cases the buyer takes the best of the fruit and 

 leaves the culls to the raiser. Thirty years ago I heard it said that 

 the apples then being put out would never pay, but the truth is 

 that apples are worth more in Centralia to-day than they ever 

 were before. I must sa}', however, that the early varieties do not 

 pay with us. 



Mr. Pearson — Was not this a better year than common with 

 you ? 



Webster — Yes sir, I think so. I know one man who came from 

 New York and bought fifty-seven car loads and took them East 

 and canned them and brought them right back to St. Louis and 

 sold them for New York apples. 



Mr. A. Bryant — I cannot answer whether the orchards of Bureau 

 County have paid or not. 



Mr. L. R. Bryant — Our orchards have paid up there, and if I 

 had a chance to plant I would do so and would expect them to 

 pay. 



Mr. Pearson — As to planting trees forty feet apart, I do not 

 think I can spare land enough for that. My idea is that a tree in 

 twenty years will give me all the fruit that it will give profitably. 

 I know the most of the older trees give fruit only fit for cider. 

 The young orchards are the only ones that have paid with us. 



Mr. Dennis — I heard a gentleman make the remark that the 

 average age of our orchards was twenty-five years, and he said 

 that in that twenty-five years they would produce as many apples 

 .as trees in the East would produce in fifty years ; he thought that 



