156 CUMBERLAND COUNTY SOCIETY. 



And first, of Fruit Trees. That the past winter will be remem- 

 bered by all fruit growers, as the "hard winter," of 1856-57, no 

 one can doubt. More trees have been entirely destroyed, or perma- 

 nently injured the past winter, than in the ten preceding taken 

 together. There has been in public prints and in private conversa- 

 tion, much speculation on the subject, but to the present time no 

 satisfactory explanation has been offered. Leaving the mooted ques- 

 tion for others to discuss, the Committee recommend to fruit growers 

 not to give up in despair, but to improve by the lesson so forcibly 

 given ; reject the tender^ varieties, and select such as prove them- 

 selves adapted to our locality. Cumberland county can raise her 

 own fruit, and a large surplus for exportation, and that too, of the 

 very best quality; but it will not be done by attempting to cultivate 

 varieties designed for some other place. 



Again, of Manures. While of a few farmers, we can speak in' 

 terms of commendation, in regard to their management of manures, 

 of the great majority we must say they are ruinously negligent in 

 this respect. The farmer who allows his manure piles to leach and 

 bleach under the droppings of the eaves, and the urine of his stock 

 to pass through aJeaky floor and waste itself in the soil beneath ; 

 ■who sees the waste from his sink spout from a stagnant pool under 

 his kitchen window; who, in poverty tones, wishes he was able to 

 purchase guano, poudrette, and superphosphate, while the accumula- 

 tion of years lies under his hen-roost, and privy, and any quantity 

 of bones are scattered about his yards, wherever the last hungry 

 dog chanced to leave them; who sells his ashes for twelve and a half 

 cents per bushel, and receives his pay, it may be, in tobacco ; who 

 neglects to accept and use the cords of kelp and rockweed which the 

 ocean lays at his feet, gratis ; who permits the finny tribes, that 

 periodically visit our bays and rivers, to come and go, without at- 

 tempting to replace, through their carcasses, the wealth which our 

 streams are hourly bearing away to the grec t deep ; and who allows 

 his muck-swamp and muscle-bed to "lie undisturbed, when puny 

 looking crops, beseech him, almost audibly, for a little ho^—such 

 a farmer will always complain of hard times, short crops, a sterile 

 soil, an inhospitable climate, and will in the end starve out, pull up 

 stakes, and move out west ; and we say fimen ! let him go, if he is 



