714 



it is notorious that the rare-ripes and early Yorks of New Jersey are de- 

 terioratiDg year by year, and that if one would now seek this fruit in 

 its greatest perfection, he must leave the seaboard and visit the clearings 

 of Michigan or the prairies of Illinois. 



And the pear, too, that luscious fruit, to perfect which many a gifted 

 man has devoted a whole life, and orchards of which of three hundred, 

 five hundred, and even a thousand varieties, may be met with in New 

 England — the pear, too, is of late subject to a frightful calamity, so des- 

 tructive in its eflfects as sometimes to sweep away whole orchards in a 

 single season, and yet so mysterious in its character that it seems still to 

 be a mooted question whether it is strictly a disease or the result of au 

 attack by some poisonous insect. The pear blight, too, is as yet un- 

 known among us, but it is steadily marching to the west, and we may 

 greatly fear that the time is not far distant when some of the noble old 

 trees that were planted by the early French settlers upon the Raisin, will 

 feel its devastating eflects. 



And here let me pause a moment to remark that our position in the 

 west is, if rightly improved, of great advantage. The diseases and the 

 insects that attack our crops, first make their appearance to the east of 

 us — some of them in Europe, and others upon our national seaboard. 

 They are for the most part many years in making their way west of 

 Lake Erie — our friends at the east, with whom we are in constant com- 

 munication through the agricultural journals, give us the benefit of their 

 experience and of their experiments for years before they become of 

 practical importance in our own labors, and we are thus, or should be 

 when the pests appear among us, several years in advance of where 

 our eastern friends were when similarly visited. 



It may be that when it comes, it will come like the potato rot — still 

 as destructive and mysterious as when it first appeared — but if experi- 

 ence has taught anything in respect to its nature or the remedy for it, 

 we have the whole benefit of that experience without undergoing any 

 of its disappointments or its disasters. 



The plum crop seems to be hopelessly lost to us, at least for the pres- 

 ent. With us the tree is still healthy, though in the eastern States the 

 black knot not only disfigures the trees, but is sapping their vitality and 

 threatens to prove as destructive to them as tl e yellows is to the peach 

 orchard. But it matters little to us whether the tree survives or not, so 



