130 Appendix. 



well distributed, and requiring no thinning; remarkable in the respect 

 that it sheds all fruit it can not perfect to a good large size according 

 to the dryness of the season. The tree responds to good treatment but 

 does tolerably in the grass plot and under neglect, and has been called 

 "the poor, shiftless man's tree." 



About the year 1858 Mr. Seth Lewelling, a brother of Henderson 

 Luelling, set the first Italian prune orchard, five acres, near Milwaukie. 

 Others, noting the elegance of the fruit, in quality, size, and flavor, 

 and its fine shipping and drying qualities, began setting trees in differ- 

 ent localities over the State for home use, and as an experiment to test 

 locality, and as a basis for business calculation. About 1870 there was 

 much talk and speculation about prunes and prune growing as a busi- 

 ness, for and against, those favoring showing facts and figures, those 

 against claiming that our prunes were not the true German and Italian 

 prunes, and that the prune in this country would, as they had in East- 

 ern States, degenerate into a worthless, watery plum not fit for drying, 

 and, at any rate, that the curculio would soon come and destroy them. 

 Solid business men considered the prune business a visionary scheme^ 

 not worthy a serious consideration. 



To verify our plums and prunes, in 1872, I ordered from August 

 Bauman, of Bolwiler on the Rhine, one of the largest and most reliable 

 nurserymen in Germany, scions of fourteen varieties of plums and 

 prunes. These came by express at a cost of $11 per package. After 

 five orders and five packages in various shapes had been received in 

 worthless condition, the sixth package enveloped in oil silk and her- 

 metically sealed in a tin can, came in good order. These were grafted 

 on bearing trees, and the third year bore fruit. The Italian prune, 

 German prune, the Petite d'Agen, Coe's Golden Drop, and all other 

 varieties — just such fruit as we had been growing for these varieties — 

 thus settling the matter of varieties beyond dispute. Whereupon, from 

 1871 to 1881, I set eighty acres to orchard near Portland; six thousand 

 prunes and plums, one thousand Royal Ann and Black Republican cher- 

 ries, fifteen hundred Bartlett pears, five hundred Winter Nelis, and 

 other pears and winter apples. 



This, I am told, was the first commercial prune orchard on the 

 coast. In 1876 I built a three-ton box drier, dried several tons of pitted 

 peach plums, sold at 16 cents per pound in fifty-pound boxes. The first 

 yield of prunes dried in 1876 brought 12 cents, and for some years did 

 not drop below 9 cents. 



It was in August, 1853, in the then little village of Portland, we met 

 our first surprise in the fruit product of Oregon. A small basket of 

 peach plums had attracted a crowd of fruit-hungry admirers. They 

 were handed out, five for a quarter, the smallest change offered or 

 accepted in pioneer days. 



To-day you can not understand the sensation of this occasion, or how, 

 later, the first boxes of Italian prunes on a country wagon collected a 

 crowd of merchants, clerks, and street people to the marketing, and how 



