118 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



NO FORESTS, NO FRUIT. 



I am from the more rural regions of our State, and having been 

 fifty successive seasons in the active, practical business of the farm, 

 I appear before you not to advance any new theory or to over- 

 whelm you with the facts and researches of others, but rather to 

 call your attention to the great climatic changes occurring within 

 the limits of my experience — its alarming, threatening nature, not 

 only to fruit culture, but to the whole vegetable and animal king- 

 dom. Why is it we fail to raise fruit as in our earlier days, even 

 with all our increased attention to it and with all our new and per- 

 haps improved varieties ? It is within my recollection that peaches 

 in every neighborhood were as plenty and as little thought of as 

 apples now are, and more uniformly to be relied upon. In 1834 

 we lost our apple crop by a frost in May — it was a marvel, out of 

 the ordinary course of nature, equally noted by all. Now if a 

 man has a peach orchard and it escapes the frosts of our winters, 

 and, coming to its maturity, bears a crop, he is satisfied as was 

 Moses on Mt. Pisgah, and though, like him, he might not be ready 

 for the last trying ordeal, he would be an enthusiast to expect to 

 see the like again, and might as well apply the axe to the roots. 

 The peach succumbs to our winter climate, of late years, and why 

 is this change ? The apple is more hardy and escapes this annual 

 ordeal only to succumb to a more trying one — our hot, dry, with- 

 ering summers. And why is this also ? And then again the ene- 

 mies to all vegetation, the insect tribes, have become not only 

 formidable in their depredations, but also in their increased species 

 and numbers. What are the conditions so favorable to them of 

 late years in contrast to that prevailing forty years ago ? Then 

 we had comparatively few of these pests among us ; at that period 

 tliey were comparatively unknown as far west as Utica, while later 

 still the fairness of the fruit in western New York, in Michigan, 

 and Ohio, has attracted my personal attention — but now they have 

 these pests more among them, though not to the extent of our re- 

 gions. In my opinion they are not the necessary concomitants of 

 civilization : they rather result in their extreme numbers and spe- 

 cies through the climatic changes wrought out from the reckless, 

 the premature, the unhallowed destruction of our primeval for- 

 ests — and equally so is to be attributed the unfavorable changes in 

 our seasons, the dryness of the atmosphere and its attendant lia- 



