194 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



trees were long-lived, and that fruit was very abundant ; but 

 that now it is otherwise. 



If these statements be admitted as reliable to any considerable 

 extent, what then is to be done ? Are we to give up orcharding, 

 and do without the useful and delicious fruits altogether ? Or 

 shall we not rather seek, by reading, experimenting and every 

 other available means, so to store our minds with knowledge as 

 to enable us to do what we can under the circumstances to 

 secure a competent supply. So men are doing in the central 

 and other parts of the State, insomuch that fruit has already 

 become one of the most remunerative crops in the Common- 

 wealth. 



Mr. Moore, of Concord, himself a very large fruit grower, 

 said at the meeting of the State Board of Agriculture, in 

 Framingham, last autumn, that in 186-1 the value of the apples 

 and pears only, which were all the kinds of fruit named in the 

 State returns of that year, was $1, 713,240. He estimated the 

 value of all other kinds of fruit at $500,000 ; making a total 

 value for that year of $2,213,240. He adds that that year was 

 a poor one for fruit, yet the farmers of that year gathered but 

 three crops which exceeded that of fruit, viz., those of hay, corn 

 and potatoes. He thought that in another decade, with a good 

 crop of fruit, the returns of the State would show fruit second 

 only in value to that of hay. And Mr. Marshall P. Wilder, the 

 great horticulturist of the State, was of the same opinion, but 

 thought the method of cultivation in Massachusetts is to be 

 different in the future from what it has been in the past. 



With all her disadvantages, such are the enterprise and 

 energy of her people that Massachusetts is now rated about the 

 second or third fruit-growing State in the Union. While this is 

 the case shall we, although thus exposed to the sea mist, — shall 

 we on the island of Martha's Vineyard, — be discouraged and not 

 keep up our good name among our sister counties ? While 

 great improvements in this line have been going on in the State, 

 especially within the last twenty-five or thirty years, we have 

 done something, it is true, but we can and ought, with our 

 facilities, to do very much more. We have obstacles to over- 

 come, and enemies to combat ; so have others the same. A few 

 citizens are doing well ; the masses do not do enough. Those 

 who have lands in abundance, as many have, and the ready 



