202 Report of State Board of Horticulture. 



quantities of this fine fruit at from twelve and one-half to fifteen cents 

 per bushel. At Portland two steamers were loading thousands of boxes 

 of Willamette valley apples for San Francisco, and, far and near, the 

 Oregon red apples were recognized as the standard of excellence. I regret, 

 friends, that the Willamette apple is no longer the standard of excel- 

 lence. I go into our local markets and find them demoralized with a flood 

 of dull colored fungus-marked and moth-tunneled fruit that bears but 

 slight resemblance to the perfect apples I saw here in 1866. 



A PAINFUL CONTRAST. 



And what a contrast in the orchards themselves. Instead of the clear 

 bark and vigorous growth, and I am now speaking of the old orchards, 

 I find moss-covered and cankered trees and branches with scaly bark, 

 affording ideal nesting places for enemies that fasten on the tree and 

 fruit only to destroy, and, worst of all, on account of some sup- 

 posed climatic changes and account of other adverse conditions that 

 have arisen in these later years, a feeling has obtained among the 

 growers themselves that it is no longer possible to raise high- 

 grade apples, and as a result of half-hearted efforts we find degeneracy 

 stamped on both tree and fruit. I do not share in this opinion that 

 high-grade apples cannot longer be raised in this beautiful valley, for scat- 

 tered here and there I find well cared for orchards that disprove the the- 

 ory. Meteorologically speaking, the Willamette section is an ideal one 

 for applegrov/ing. The same moist, cool breezes that the apples revel in 

 come up from the ocean as they did thirty, forty years ago. We have 

 the same even temperature by day and night, and abundant sunshine of 

 the summer months, followed by the most beautiful of all seasons, the 

 Indian summer, bringing to the orchards everywhere a wealth of gold 

 and scarlet. 



CAUSES OF THE CHANGE. 



To what then shall we attribute the degeneracy of the apple orchards 

 of the Willamette valley? To two causes, I believe — exhaustion 

 and neglect. Year after year those trees have borne prodigious harvests 

 of incomparable fruit with little or no return to the soil and with little or 

 no attempt to protect them from parasitic and insect enemies. A tree 

 lacking vigor offers the least resistance to diseases and adverse conditions. 

 And, in like manner as the blood of a human being would become im- 

 poverished for want of nourishing food, so has the blood of these old 

 trees become impoverished for the lack of those valuable mineral salts, 

 their food which has been exhausted from the soil. If you do not think 

 such is the case, plant a young tree where an old one has grown and 

 the result will be a failure. If the soil has become so impoverished that 

 It will not nourish a young tree, how do you expect an old tree to thrive 

 and perfect its fruit? We might just as reasonably expect an old and en- 

 feebled man to perform the same labor that he did in the vigor and 

 strength of his earlier manhood. Now, in order to ascertain what the 

 soil should contain in an orchard, let us go to the chemist and ask him 



