184 BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



ought to be known, if it was not, that picking off the blossoms 

 and small apples would change the bearing year. 



Mr. Wetherell. I will state a fact in connection with 

 this subject. A farmer in Groton, when I was there a few 

 weeks ago, riding with me by some orchards that were well 

 loaded with apples, especially with Baldwins, said: "Those 

 trees show the benefit of the canker-worm. Those trees used 

 to bear upon the even years, but they have been defoliated by 

 the canker-worm the bearing year, so that they just escaped 

 being killed, and the next year, the odd year, they bore 

 luxuriantly. So much we have to thank the canker-worm 

 for." This shows that the change has been made without the 

 labor of picking oflf the blossoms by hand. 



Mr. CoTTiNG, of Hudson. On our ancestral farm, some 

 twenty-five years ago, we made a nursery, and from a Baldwin 

 tree, planted before I can remember, I selected some scions, 

 which I cut in February or the first of March, and put them 

 in a cool place. The early part of the next April, I grafted 

 with m}' own hands a row of trees in the nursery, and from 

 the same bunch of scions I grafted two other rows, from the 

 20th to the 25th of June. When those trees grew to the 

 proper size to be set out, they were taken up and put in the 

 orchard, Avithout any choice of trees, taking them indiscrim- 

 inately from the two engraftments. We have trees that bear 

 every other year. There are apples every year. Last year 

 they were a drug. This year we had more Baldwin apples 

 than perhaps the whole town of Berlin put together. The 

 farm is in Berlin, Worcester County. The apples are exceed- 

 ingly fine. And let me say here, that since I was. a small boy, 

 there has never been a canker-worm on the two thousand trees 

 on that ftirm. We have never been troubled with the canker- 

 worm, but have been troubled by caterpillars. 



The Chairman. We have with us the Secretary of the 

 Board of Agriculture of Connecticut. He is well posted on 

 the subject of fruits. Will Mr. Gold come forward and give 

 us some of his views ? 



T. S. Gold, of Connecticut. This is a subject in which I 

 am too much interested, to allow this opportunity to pass 

 without saying a few words in behalf of IVuit-culture in 

 New England. 



