52 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



can in the factory, carry fresh fruits of the most transient kinds 

 through all seasons and to all climates. With all these facilities 

 and the immense increase of fruit plantations, the price of fruit 

 has steadily advanced during the last fifty years in our country at 

 large, beyond that of any other of our staple products. Within my 

 observation of forty years, good winter apples have advanced five 

 to eight hundred per cent, in market value, in western Massachu- 

 setts. I have seen the finest quality of winter apples sold there 

 for one shilling per bushel, all hand picked and nicely assorted, 

 and thirty-five years later the same quality would bring seventy- 

 five cents to one dollar per bushel in the same market, and all this 

 while the area and quality of fruit growing had increased beyond 

 the ratio of population. The fact is evident that the consumption 

 of fruit is much more a necessity of the every day diet of this 

 feverish, fast age, and when once established, cannot be safely 

 denied. Hence the demand is increasing beyond all present 

 sources of supply, both from home consumers and foreign export. 



Concerning the foreign demand President Wilder, of the Amer- 

 ican Pomological Society, says in his last biennial report: " The 

 foreign market for our fruits is now as well established as that for 

 our wheat. Australia and Germany will consume immense quan- 

 tities of dried fruits, but England prefers fresh fruit. From Octo- 

 ber, 1876, to July, 1877, there was shipped to foreign ports 396,000 

 barrels of apples. In the month of December alone, about 90,000 

 barrels were sent to a foreign market, prices ranging from $3.50 

 to $10 per barrel in the English market. 



The canning process has been brought to great perfection, and 

 that of drying promises to be of greater utility when at its utmost 

 development, reducing the weight and rendering it transportable 

 to all climes, and readily preserved for years. Statistics of this 

 business as a part of our national industry would be very desirable, 

 but nothing definite has as yet been secured. Six firms in Califor- 

 nia employ two thousand women and children, and turn out two 

 million dollars worth of canned goods annually; and of dried fruits 

 alone, seventy-five tons were turned out in 1S76 by the Alden com- 

 pany in that state. New Jersey receives over a million dollars an- 

 nually for the product of her peach crop, and has now immense 

 dry houses in which the surplus crop is saved for the markets of 

 the world. The mountain regions of east Tennessee and north 



