Additional Papers. 125 



to all our tame or cultivated varieties of berries, cherries, plums, 

 grapes, peaches and apples. 



No wonder, then, is it, that Missouri has taken such wonderful 

 strides in this fruit business in the last score of years? When we 

 see orchards covering our lands by the thousands, and that of not 

 only a few acres but of orchards of hundreds, and of thousands of 

 acres, we understand that it is all on account of its adaptability as out- 

 lined by the wild fruits which grow and succeed within its border. 



Horticulture in Missouri began with the first settler way back 

 more than one hundred years ago. When the pioneer came to make 

 his home among the Indians and wild beasts, he brought with him 

 seeds and seedlings, scions, cuttings, grafts; and wherever the log 

 hut was built there the fruits of civilization were planted and grown, 

 each year, little by little improving and bettering and developing; 

 and we are reaping the result of their careful selection of seeds and 

 cuttings and scions. About twenty-five years later we find a wonder- 

 ful improvement in the varieties produced ; grafted or budded trees 

 were planted and orchards of budded or grafted fruits began to be 

 scattered over the state in the more settled portions or, as was more 

 often the case, these old seedling trees were top grafted over again 

 to some good budded variety until whole orchards were turned from 

 a lot of wildings, to a lot of civilized fruits which made their owners 

 happy over these new fruits. There are apple trees now standing 

 in Jackson county; Montgomery county, Jasper county, and St. 

 Charles county, which vv'ere planted eighty years ago and are now still 

 bearing- fruit. Some of these trees are nine feet around the bodies 

 and one of them has a spread of branches of over 100 feet and has 

 borne over no bushels of fruit in a single year. One section of a 

 tree nearly 100 years old grown in Jackson county measures 10 feet 

 in circumference and is shown in the Horticultural exhibit at the 

 World's Fair. 



For the first twenty-five years of the last century we find, 

 fruits for the farmer's use with little market for surplus to be the 

 condition, which confronted the horticulturist. This was the time of 

 almost spontaneous growth, at least it was the time when orchard 

 trees grew with little care and less cultivation. All that seemed to 

 be needed was to plant the trees and nature would take care of them. 

 Little trouble was had with insects, less with the fungous diseases, but 

 more loss was sustained from birds than any other cause, and as a 

 result the farmer and fruit grower began the war upon birds which 

 continued for fifty years, until our feathered songsters and friends 



