STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 59 



The greatest vicissitude wliich our fruit has to pass through is 

 climate. And that is in the spring, about blooming time ; late frosts, 

 cold lake winds, rains when in bloom, rains followed by hot sun which 

 scald the bloom. 



There are many points that I have not touched -which will be 

 followed up by those that report upon the same subject. 



If I have provoked you to jealousy, I have accomplished my end. 



WHITAKER'S REPORT. 



B. Whitaker (of Warsaw) sent in the following report on Orchard 

 Culture, which was read by the Secretary : 



ORCHARD CULTURE. 



The apple, our leading fruit, is among fruits what corn is among the 

 cereal products. 



It seems designed in nature as the standard upon which to rely when 

 the more precarious fruits fail, or for want of adaptation fail to supply the 

 demand. 



The apple is wonderfully adapted to extremes of climate. The ease 

 and simplicity of its production, and its healthiness in all conditions of 

 life, as well as the many uses and ways it can be transformed into in its 

 dried or pressed state, besides the susceptibility of having it fresh the 

 year round, can but increase our admiration of this most inestimable gift 

 of nature. 



Its antiquity is traced to the Garden of Eden, and we hear of it 

 among the nations from time to time, but such size, flavor and variety 

 as we now can produce probably never were attained. Such apples as 

 our Early Harvest, Red Astrachan, Sweet Bough, Maiden's Blush, Rambo, 

 Benoni, Snow, Hawley, Fall Pippins, Summer Queen, etc., with the 

 captivating winter varieties, such as the Baldwin, Penn, Red Streak, 

 Talpehoching, Northern Spy, Pryor's Red, Rhode Island Greenings, 

 Ben Davis, Wine Sap, Dominie, Hubbardson's None-Such, Smith Cider. 

 Willow Twig; these, and others, in their perfection, are sufficient, it 

 would seem, to satisfy the ambition of the most fastidious amateur. 



If such results in the development of good apples have been attained 

 with the hap-hazard culture, and from stocks from degenerate seed pro- 

 misciously taken from immature and refuse apples, there certainly is in 

 store an opening for a still higher development. 



Most of the old orchards in this section were planted when a multi- 

 tude of cares incident to providing new homes taxed the time and means 

 of nearly all. Yet these old orchards are paying good interest, besides 

 gladdening the hearts of many with the annual yield of the healthest lux- 

 ury for family use which the earth yields. 



Within a few years past, and up to the present time, the incentive 

 to planting out new orchards has been more than usually active ; and, 

 strange as it may seem to the people east and south of us, there are about 

 three-fifths of these young orchards of the Ben Davis. The hardiness of 



