COUNTY REPORTS. 353 



I believe it to be our best policy to produce here all that can be profitably 

 :^rown to supply the wants of our people, so far as they can be supplied, and have 

 a generous surplus to send to less favored sections,. in order to adjust the fruit 

 accounts, and in time leave a good balance of cash in our favor. 



How to do this may properly be termed the burning question, because if we 

 do not properly Folve the problem, and we continue to indulge our cultivated appe- 

 tite for fruits, we shall find that a good-sized hole has been burned in our purees, 

 through which our dollars, whether of gold, silver or paper, will continue to slip 

 •out of sight and out of our reach. 



It has been clearly demonstrated that we have here in this section of the 

 country a climate and soil well adapted to the cultivation and production of many 

 of the fruits common to this latitude, particularly of apples and some other kinds 

 of fruit, and we should seek with earnest diligence to develop this branch of hor- 

 cticulture. 



How best to do this, 1 may say, is a large-sized question, and fully ripe. We 

 have seen that we import over $19,000,000 worth of fruit, besides the vast amount 

 we produce, and that we export *6, 500, 000 worth. 



The market may be said to be open for us to do our very best for both home 

 and foreign markets ; our people will eat tempting fruits if they can buy them; and 

 the more tempting they are handled and prepared for market, the quicker they will 

 sell, and the better price they will bring. 



We have in the Ozark section every needed variety of hill, valley and slope 

 for our orchards, and they may be so protected by growing timber, that they will 

 lie comparatively safe from the effects of strong winds of less force than a tornado. 

 By careful experiments with nesv varieties of apples, pears, peaches and other 

 fruits, as they are brought out and presented to the growers of fruit, we can con- 

 tinue to improve both the quantity and quality of the products of our orchards 

 and vineyards. 



We may also diligently study and compare results that have been recorded in 

 .such societies as this, and carefully record all important discoveries made by our 

 own members, in the search for the best. 



We should also seek to rid our orchards of destructive insects, as by this means 

 alone can we be able to raise fruit fit to send into a competing market. 



And now, if 1 have said a word or dropped a hint that will be of value to any 

 member of this Society, I shall not have spoken in vain. I earnestly hope we may 

 all live to see the day when the dwellers of the Ozarks shall literally sit under their 

 own vine and fig or other fruit-trees, and that there ^will be none to molest or 

 make afraid that they will not have a full crop of the choicest and best of fruits. 



PEA.R CULTURE. 



BY H. H. PARKS, SPRINGFIELD, MO. 



My experience in growing this frnit has been confined almost exclusively to 

 that much-abused pear, the Keifler. 



Perhaps by giving you an account of the location and treatment given my 

 orchard, which so far has withstood the bliglat,.that terrible scoarge of tie pear- 

 tree, we may arrive at some conclusion in regard to the cause of success or failure 

 in pear culture. 



My orchard is on the brow of a hill, slightly sloping toward the southwest, 

 and on land which, when purchased two years previous, was considered worn out. 

 The soil might be termed mulatto, with clay subsoil. 



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