REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE. 119 



Oregon. The incessant drudgery, the numerous and keen 

 disappointments whicli are peculiar to all new enterprises, 

 and from which horticulture in Oregon did not escape, are 

 things of the past. We have reached the era of scientific 

 management of the orchard and of remunerative prices for 

 the product. The apple orchards of Oregon are conducted 

 along business lines and scientific basis. They are pruned 

 each season, plowed and cultivated from time to time, as 

 required, and thoroughly sprayed with the proper compounds 

 five or six times each year to combat and subdue fungous dis- 

 eases and insect pests, notably the codling moth, and in con- 

 sequence are enabled to market from ninety-five to ninety- 

 eight per cent, of good, clean, wholesome apples. While 

 apples are now selling in the Middle West and East at $1.50 

 per barrel, our apples bring readily eighty-five cents to $1.25 

 per box of fifty pounds each, or more than double, as one 

 barrel is equal to three boxes. Many cars of first-class four- 

 tier apples for export trade were sold this week at $1.25 per 

 box. 



Horticulture is a special work — an applied science. In it 

 expectations are never realized without painstaking work and 

 trying patience. Good results come only to those, even in 

 this favored state of ours, who go into the business under- 

 standingly, give to it their best thoughts and care, manage 

 the apple orchard as they would any other business venture, 

 and keep abreast of the times. 



AMERICA IS A LAND OF FRUITS. 



Prof. L. H. Bailey recently said that "America is a land 

 of fruits because, for one thing, its agriculture is so recent 

 and so little bound by tradition, that the farmer feels himself 

 free to discard old and unprofitable enterprises for new and 

 relatively profitable ones." There is, perhaps, no state to 

 which this applies with more force than Oregon, and it can 

 be said truthfully that in the constellation of states none 

 shine brighter in that particular than our own Oregon, espe- 

 cially in the growing of fruit for the export, or, rather, trans- 

 Atlantic and trans-Pacific trade. 



This particular trade demands a hard apple, as ocean trans- 

 portation is a very severe test, but, as I have stated elsewhere, 

 while we grow good apples all over our state, certain localities 

 are better adapted for the growing of hard apples, and such 

 localities should confine themselves to as few varieties as 



