320 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



ket for surplus fruits, and stimulated the planting of commercial orchards near its line. 

 Within the last ten or twelve years, probably not less than twelve hundred acres of 

 land have been planted with fruit trees and grape vines, in the vicinity of the four 

 stations on that road, within the limits of this county, viz. — Du Bois, Ashley, Rich- 

 view and Irvington. In addition to this, no little attention lias been given to small 

 fruits and early vegetables. The larger orchards of recent planting are mainly of peach, 

 although almost all kinds of fruit which are known to succeed here, or of which there 

 are probabilities of success, have been planted. A small portion, however, of the 

 orchards lately established, are in full bearing. So far as they have fruited, a reasonable 

 degree of success has been met with. Longer time will be needed to determine whether 

 the expectations of planters will be realized. Very truly yours, 



Richview, Jan. 5, 1869. G. WILGUS. 



WHITESIDE COUNTY. 



The history of Horticulture in this county is deserving of more attention than I can 

 in these few lines give. So few dates have been preserved of the early attempts at 

 fruit raising that much of its early history is already lost. 



A large number of the early fruit trees found growing here, previous to 1840, were 

 such as were raised from seed, brought by the pioneers on their first settlement in the 

 county. The planting of seed took place soon after the close of the Black Hawk war. 

 Of these early planters, I call to mind Mr. Norton, U. B. Youns;, Joel Harvey, S. M. Coe, 

 Luther Wetherby, and W. Cantrol. 



To show the cost and labor to get fruit trees here, at this early day, I would say that 

 Jesse Scott brought his from Ohio, in a boat of his own construction, and planted them 

 in June, 1839. An unfortunate spot was selected for the orchard, and they were mostly 

 lost in the spring of 1813, by the great flood, which occurred in Rock river, at that time. 



Of these early planted trees, but few now remain. The causes of their early failure 

 are various, and the lessons they impart, should not be lost by those that expect to 

 make fruit raising a success. 



One of the prominent causes of failure then, as now, was planting on low, wet and 

 undrained land, destitute even of sood, natural drainage. Another fruitful cause of 

 failure, has been planting tender varieties. Tender here is, however, a relative term. 

 These so-called tender varieties were mostly killed, at the snow-line, in the winter of 

 1843-43, and but once, do I recollect, have all parts of the tree of these tender varieties 

 been killed, and that was in the winter of 185.5-56. Many trees are lost during our very 

 cold winters from a lack of care in pruning while young. 



A well balanced head where no large forks or limbs arc suffered to grow, such a tree 

 has many chances for long life over such as have received little or no care. The scale 

 insect has been another cause of failure, for it came here with our trees, and if it has not 

 killed many, it has no less been a silent and fatal enemy. 



The first nurseries were planted, in this county, by Harry Burlingame and L. S. Pen- 

 nington. The trees were in part grafted, in the winter of 1840-41. At least one half of 

 these were lost by the very hard winter of 1842^13. Owing to the great loss sustained 

 and the dark day which this hard winter threw over fruit raising — Mr. Burlingame sold 



