274 ' TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



Pennock, Vandevere Pippin, Yellow Bellflower, Rawles' Janet, and 

 Winesap. 



It is almost impossible to find a good eating ajDple in either Cham- 

 paign or Urbana during fall or early winter, except Milams; but Snow, 

 Rambo, Porter, and some others of the newer varieties, begin to make 

 their appearance from the later planted orchai'ds. Of these there are 

 quite a large number commencing to bear. Prominent among these are 

 the orchards of M. L. and M. Dunlap, J. B. Phinney, C. F. Columbia, 

 R. Allen, and others. 



Until 1856 there had been no established nursery in the county, but 

 several parties had kept small stocks sent from abroad to be sold here. 

 Nearly all the trees, prior to that time, came from the Rochester nurse- 

 ries, and were mostly Baldwins, Northern Spys, Russets, Greenings, etc., 

 nearly all of which are valueless on the prairie, although isolated instances 

 occur where individual trees of these varieties, from some local cause, 

 have done well. 



The Messrs. Curtis, of Paris, Edgar Covmty; L. Ellsworth & Co., of 

 Naperville,DuPage County, and other Western nurserymen, furnished more 

 or less trees. To their credit be it said, more of them are better adapted 

 to our climate and soil than those brought from the East. I suspect this 

 to be more the result of accident than design, for fifteen or twenty years 

 ago the subject of what varieties were best adapted to the West was but 

 little understood, owing to the limited experience of the orchardists in the 

 West. Now the thing is different, and there is no valid excuse for a man 

 to plant trees that are not hardy, productive, and valuable. 



In April, 1856, M. L. Dunlap established the first nursery for grow- 

 ing and selling trees, commencing by planting 1 30,000 grafts, comprising 

 nearly ic^o varieties. Owing to the extreme dryness of the season, nearly 

 all the grafts failed to grow. Doubtless this was a blessing to the future 

 purchasers of those trees, had they lived and grown, for in this list of 

 varieties were nearly one hundred that are unsuitable for Western 

 orchards; but at that time they were untried, and, therefore, it was not 

 possible to know their value. The writer has often sold one hundred 

 trees for an orchard, in which were from sixty to seventy varieties, the 

 purchaser wanting as many varieties as possible. Now, the desii^e of 

 most planters has been narrowed down to ten or fifteen well-known 

 sorts, and a disposition manifested to let some one else experiment. 



Mr. D., intending to make fruit-growing a part of his business, 

 planted an orchard of fifteen hundred trees, five hundred of these being 

 seedlings, into which it was the intention to top-graft new and untried 

 varieties. Some of them have been grafted, others still remain. The 

 first orchard was more an experimental one than .anything else, many 

 varieties being then planted that the proprietor would not now allow to 

 be set on his grounds, while others, new and untried, have proved 

 valuable. 



Other nurseries soon sprung up, and tree planting was stimulated to 

 a gi-eat extent; and had all the trees lived that have been planted in the 

 county, we should now be supplied with an abundance of fruit; but, as 



