190 TRi\NSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



From Joseph Starkey, 



Concord of ^870, graded 73 



From D. B. Wier, Lacon, 



Concord of 1870, graded 77 



A. A. Hilliard, Brighton, 



Concord, impure, cask-flavored. 



Cider, six years old, nut-flavored, sweet and palatable. 



Your Committee would be understood that in grading wines, one 

 variety is not compared with another, but each stands upon its merits. 

 We regret that there was not a better collection to represent this impor- 

 tant branch of Horticulture. 



Respectfully submitted, 



J. E. Starr, Chairman, 



The following paper was then read by the author. 



THE EFFECT OF SETTLEMENT AND CULTIVATION ON 



FRUIT CULTURE. 



BY ROBERT MANNING, SALEM, MASS. 



The subject assigned to me, " The Efl[ect of Settlement and Cultiva- 

 tion on Fruit Culture," is a wide one, and, unlike most others, does not 

 become narrower but wider by division. The "Effect of Cultivation on 

 Fruit" might be taken to include all the changes which have been pro- 

 duced in fruit by the hand of man since Adam was placed in the garden 

 of Eden to dress it and keep it. But taken in connection with the " Effect 

 of Settlement," and with the subject on which I had the honor to send 

 you a paper a year ago, "The Deterioration of the Apple Crop," I infer 

 that the less favorable or positively injurious effects produced by settle- 

 ment and cultivation form the aspect of the subject which I am more 

 particularly expected to discuss. 



There are plants which appear to have an instinctive love of human 

 habitations, and to linger around their ruins. The butter-cup and the 

 plantain spring up around the footsteps of man wherever he goes; 

 others seem as untamable as the Indian, and disappear before the advance 

 of civilization, among which, as a fruit-bearing plant, may be particu- 

 larly noted the wild strawberry ; so also birds and insects disappear, as 

 the country becomes settled, to be succeeded by others. The midges, 

 which are so annoying in wooded wildernesses, are almost unknown in 

 thickly-settled localities. On the other hand, the increase of destructive 

 insects is but too well known to fruit-growers. 



Let us consider the effect of settlement on climate. The most notice- 

 able effect of settlement in wooded countries is the removal of the forests. 

 It is a well-established fact that trees and other plants possess a specific 

 temperature, though in a much less degree than animals; but whether 

 this is sufficient to perceptibly raise the temperature of the air in winter 

 can not yet be stated, though it seems not impossible that large extents of 

 forest might produce this effect. But there is no doubt that the shelter 



