18 Third Annual Report 



one year ago: that the first cost of a barrel of apples to the 

 grower was $i, the apple industry has paid the grower ioo% 

 on money and labor invested. Tell me of any business in this 

 county that pays ioo% profit outside of growing fruit, and 

 every American will be as eager to get stock as the gold seekers 

 were to reach California in 1848. 



Brothers in Horticulture there never was a better time to 

 grasp this industry than now. We must educate ourselves in 

 the most up-to-date and practical methods of deriving the best 

 results in raising fruit. The time has passed when we can plant 

 a potato in early springtime and reap a harvest in the autumn 

 without labor and expense. In the same degree we cannot ex- 

 pect fruit from a tree that we have simply set out ten years 

 ago without any care or expense. This is an age when we have 

 got to fight — all kinds of insects and fungous diseases — in order 

 to grow perfect fruit. 



The oyster-shell bark-louse is an insect that has lately made 

 its appearance in our vicinity in such large numbers that unless 

 we are able to exterminate it altogether I fear that we will prac- 

 tically lose many of our best orchards. 



Market gardening in our county is hardly practical to but 

 a very few on account of the limited demand for the products 

 and the distance from the large centers that consume the vege- 

 tables. 



Potato culture in many of our mountainous towns, where 

 apples do not thrive well, is quite extensively carried on and 

 this year will .net the growers a good many thousand dollars, 

 although but few of the growers raise over 800 bushels, nearly 

 all of the farmers in the county make it a source of a good an- 

 nual revenue, which furnishes them ready means for better 

 schools, more comforts of life, less farm mortgages and happier 

 homes. The past season being such a wet one, many of the 

 potato fields have been totally destroyed by rot and, in many 

 cases, very discouraging results have followed ; but "we are 

 not here to-day to bury Caesar, but to praise him," and our 

 fields this year that have been barren of sound potatoes next 

 season may reward the grower two hundred fold. 



Our apple trees that were destitute of the luscious fruit this 

 season were building up tissue and fiber and blossom buds for 

 next season's bountiful harvest — and let us all be ready in the 

 early springtime to grasp the industry in an intelligent, thor- 

 ough, and business-like way that will give us better results than 

 we have ever yet received. 



