APPENDIX TO STATE SOCIETY'S REPORT. 347 



Report of the Third District. 



BY A. L. HAY. 



The Third, or Illinois River Horticultural District of this State, 

 comprising twenty-one of the principal counties in Central Illinois, and 

 which, as a member of the Committee on General Horticulture, I am 

 supposed to represent, is (I am sorr)' to admit, but a sad experience com- 

 pels me to acknowledge the fact) clearly entitled to be known as the 

 dead-beat district of the State — there being only ten of the twenty-one 

 counties which feel enough interest in horticulture to have a representa- 

 tive in your Society. 



In the early part of last summer I went to some little trouble and 

 expense to purchase postal cards, and had published upon them the in- 

 structions given by you to said committee, and mailed one to each mem- 

 ber of your Society living in said counties, and also to those living in 

 other counties in the district, so far as I could learn the address of per- 

 sons who would be likely to feel enough interest in horticulture to pay 

 any attention to them, asking that reports might be mailed to my address 

 in time for compilation before the meeting of your Society at Gales- 

 burg ; and, up to the present time, I have received but two answers from 

 them — one from Mrs. C. C. Pollock, of Mercer county ; another from 

 B. L. T. Bourland, of Peoria county, which you will find inclosed. 



As for our own county (Morgan), I will say that the past has been a 

 remarkable season for fruit of all kinds. With the exception of peaches, 

 fruit crops (like the grasshoppers of Kansas) have been a burden. 



At first, strawberries made an attempt to supply the demand for 

 small fruits, so that a failure of the raspberry crop would not be felt ; 

 and had it not been for a severe drouth, lasting nearly six weeks, and 

 extending entirely through the fruiting season, it would have been, in a 

 great measure, successful. However, one-fourth of an acre of the Wil- 

 son's Albany, upon our own grounds, produced thirty-seven and a half 

 bushels, or at the rate of one hundred and fifty bushels per acre. The 

 raspberry, coming next in turn, endeavored to put the strawberry to 

 shame, and the copious showers, which fell in due time, made it the 

 largest crop of the kind ever gathered in this county. The market was 

 not only bountifully and cheaply supplied, but hundreds and thousands 

 of boxes rotted both on the market and in the field. 



