76 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



prefer to buy what tbej need, if they can do so, rather than to- 

 run the expense of a garden. The tendency of the times is 

 toward specialties in everything. The old style of village family 

 gardens is fast disappearing. The grounds primarily set with 

 shrubbery and trees are too much overgrown for vegetables. Cur- 

 rant bushes have disappeared since the advent of the worms, so 

 that currants are only raised by those who make a specialty of 

 them. It is of but little use to plant isolated patches of peas, 

 because of the birds which prey upon them. Cabbages can only 

 be raised successfully in large patches ; many families have given 

 them up entirely, even on farms, and depend on purchasing them ; 

 and so on through the whole list of fruits and vegetables. Many 

 people would be glad to purchase their supplies if they could 

 only do so. It is important for farmers to watch these tendencies 

 and step in, and fill all such opportunities It is easy to complain 

 about an insufficient market, but there is no one so far from 

 market as the person who has nothing to sell, 



I am deeply impressed with the idea that the general and in- 

 creasing difficulties attending fruit and vegetable growing are so 

 great that nothing but intelligent and watchful care will succeed 

 in any branch of these pursuits. I believe that such care will 

 win, and that there is a boundless field of profit and enjoyment 

 open to the man who avails himself of what is already known in 

 selecting sites, choosing varieties, fighting enemies, and caring for 

 orchards and fruit beds generally. The market to the west of us 

 is unlimited for fruit, and however plenty and cheap early fruit 

 and windfalls may be, that which is well preserved and properly 

 marketed will still sell for prices which will make the land and 

 labor devoted to iheir culture and preservation more profitable 

 than that devoted to any of the more common pursuits of 

 agriculture. 



There are laws governing the very developments of civilization 

 which it will be well for us to heed. New England was once a 

 wheat exporting country. Its people do not now attempt to raise 

 their own bread. They can use their land to better purpose. 



The old farms in Walworth county, in this state, among which 

 I spent my boyhood, are not now cultivated in wheat at all ; but 



