232 GENERAL HISTORY. 



was forced to the conclusion that they were pretty well cleaned out. Of course 

 I could not be sure that all were gone, while the popular opinion is that [it 

 took several years, nor can I be sure that none are left at this time. I note, 

 however, that they disajjpeared in all these orchards about the same time, j"^ 



There are several ways in which they may have been introduced. About 

 1859 or '60 Dr. Bailey received cions of several kinds, from friends in Mas- 

 sachusetts, and top grafted a number of trees, some of them quite near 

 where the worms were first noticed. There may, perchance, have been eggs 

 on some of these cions. Whether few or many would matter but little. 

 With the good staying chaiacter of this insect two might suffice, since their 

 increase, though slow, would surely become ultimately manifest. 



Or they may have been brought on bushes, or in some way from native 

 trees, although I never saw tliem in the f> rest till long after they appeared 

 in our orchards. When the Bailey orchard looked as though fire had passed 

 through it, excited men who knew nothing of canker worms would cut large 

 branches full of worms, to be carried to their homes, or to be shown in town, 

 scattering them by the way, and perhaps conveying them many miles upon 

 their clothing or wagons. Possibly they came to us in some such manner, 

 even from a long distance. 



Subsequently Mr. Steere writes that, a number of years ago, at one of 

 their Farmers' Club meetings, Hon. A. D. Hall stated that he, with the 

 help of hired men, had destroyed the canker worm, at his residence near 

 Tecumseh, by shaking them down upon straw and burning. He thinks that 

 Mr. Hall said he had "plenty of them," before hearing of the case of the 

 Bailey orchard. He may, however, have mistaken something else for the 

 canker worm. 



Joseph Beal and William, his son (father of Dr. Wm. J. Beal, of the State 

 Agricultural College), moved to the township of Eollin in 1883, and during 

 that year William Beal and Erastus Aldrich purchased government land in 

 that township. 



During the year 1834 Joseph S. Allen also purchased land in the same- 

 township and settled thereon, and the next spring planted a seedling orchard 

 among the burned and blackened logs. 



About 1840 C. C. Cooley commenced a nursery in the township, the west- 

 ern portion of the county proving well adapted to the culture of fruits and 

 even to peach culture but for occasional paroxysms of extreme cold. 



In 1S8G John W. Allen had a fine young peach orchard of one thousand 

 trees, whicli may be expected to yield its first crop in 1887. There is a good 

 market for the fruit in the vicinity; also a commercial fruit dryer in the 

 village of Rollin. 



An apple orchard in Rollin, on the farm of the late John Hawkins, now 

 fifty years old, is yet in good bearing condition. On the same farm a tree 

 of sugar pear, fifty-two years old, has borne five bushels of pears in a single 

 year. The largest orchard in this vicinity is that of Bishop Ames, consisting 

 of twelve hundred apple trees. Nearly every farmer grows more or less fruit. 

 The market point is Hudson, where as many as three thousand five hundred' 

 barrels of apples have been marketed in a single year. 



In 1877 S. B. Mann, in a paper read before the State Pomological Society 

 at its winter meeting, held at Pontiac, says: ''There was never a more 

 bountiful crop of apples harvested in the county than that of 187G." 



Peter Collar, of Palmyra, planted last spring an orchard of four hundreds 



