112 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



FRUIT-CULTURE. 



ESSEX. 



From the Report of the Qommitlee. 



The apple has of late years received much abuse among us, 

 and the planting and care of apple-trees has been ridiculed by 

 those even who would be our teachers. 



Even the subject of the "permanent decline of the apple 

 orchards of New England " has been suggested by the highest 

 authority, and it becomes us all (all at least who intend to 

 raise our own apples, and follow it as a profitable business) to 

 look into those things and see if they are really so. 



Our own opinion is simply this: that there is a "per- 

 manent decline " in many and most of the apple-orchards in 

 this part of New England, and that it arises from sheer 

 neglect or an undue zeal in the wrong direction. Who that 

 has travelled through any of the towns in this county, during 

 the last summer, has not noticed with sadness and humiliation 

 the effects of the tent caterpillar, or seen the trees " burnt as 

 with fire "by the persistent canker-worm, thus marring the 

 beauty of our otherwise beautiful scenery ? Can trees in such 

 a condition be reasonably expected to bear regular crops of 

 good marketable fruit? Or, if left wholly to the ravages of 

 these and other insects for five, ten or fifteen years, is it a 

 wonder that many of our orchards should show symptoms of 

 a " permanent decline " ? 



We notice in the " Transactions of the Massachusetts Hor- 

 ticultural Society" for 1874, that the subject of "legislative 

 enactments to prevent the multiplication of injurious insects 

 in neglected orchards " was fully discussed, and a bill to that 

 effect strongly urged by some of the members. In fact, such 

 a bill was presented some six years ago to the agricultural 



