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long as the curculio strips it entirely of its fruit, and leaves us when fall 

 comes not even a memento of the crop that should have been there. 

 Twenty years ago the plum orchards along the Hudson, and through 

 central and western New York produced in such spontaneous abun- 

 dance that he was fortunate who could sell the crop at eight, six, or some- 

 times even four shillings a bushel. So great has heen the change since 

 then that I have this year been assured by a gentleman noted for his 

 noble Washingtons and imperial Gages, that five dollars would not more 

 than pay the actual labor that must be expended in saving a single bushel 

 from the ravages of this insect Indeed, the plum tree may be said 

 to be no longer serviceable, and to be occupied by the curculio simply 

 as a fortress from which he may sally out and lay waste our apricot, 

 our nectarine, and our cherry orchards. 



When we recall to mind all these disasters and many others that are 

 increasing upon us, we have a right, perhaps, to look back with some 

 regret to the good old times when the apple was an apple, and not a 

 neat for grub worms, and when the plum was of further service than 

 merely for an offensive beetle to lay his eggs in. 



But whorefore is it that disasters are thus crowding around the path 

 of the tarraer ? It is certainly not the case that Providence is less kind 

 than formerly, or that any of the great laws of nature have been changed 

 for the purpose of bringing disappointment to our labors, or that the 

 rain any the less falls, or the sun less shines upon the just and the un- 

 just, than in the days of our fathers. There is a cause for the increase 

 of destructive insects upon us, and none the less is there a cause for 

 which the farmer, unintentionally, doubtless, is responsible, for the dis- 

 eases now prevailing in the vegetable kingdom. 



As to these diseases, it would scarcely be worth while for me, in a 

 brief address like this, to make much remark. I can only say that 

 thus far the investigations of the scientific have proved greatly in fault, 

 and that for the most part they are the necessary consequence of a long 

 cultivation of crops in a state differing materially from their natural 

 state. Almost everything we now cultivate is in an improved otndi- 

 tion — the potato has been improved from a nearly worthless root to the 

 valuable edible we now find it — wheat is thought once to have been but 

 little better than the chess into which so many men fancy it still turns — 

 and the peach was once a bitter fruit, which cultivation has brought up 



