78 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



over this county considerably dining the past few years, and last fall I 

 found numbers of phices where there were peacli trees, and wherever I 

 found peach trees I found plenty of peaches. There is one man about two- 

 miles south who had soine trees set right along in his fence corners, and 

 I discovt red that those trees were low, even bending almost to the ground 

 with i»eaches; and a neighbor had a tine crop of peaches this year, but 

 his land is highly elevated; it is clay and gravel and sand mixed, with a 

 good deal such bottom as Mr. I'itt spoke of. As far as pear culture is con- 

 cerned, I believe there is not a farmer in Gratiot count}- but, if his land is 

 Iiigh enough to i)revent the Avater from standing on it, can grow the 

 Bartlett pear successfully. 



Q: You have seen some of them? 



3Ir. Croy: Well, I had a Bartlett pear growing in my garden, that I 

 set out there five years ago last spring; I have had four crops of pears 

 from it. 



Q: What was the quality of the pears? 



Mr. Croy: Well, they were nice, average-size pears. That tree has 

 borne a crop of pears every year for me. I have kept it restricted. 



MICHIGAN FRUITS IN COMPARISON WITH OTHERS. 



Mr. Reid: Mr. Tracy, you travel around this country more or less. What 

 do you find in your observations as to the reputation of Michigan fruits, 

 as to their reliability in packing or their quality, etc.? You run across 

 them occasionally in the niarkets, and what is said? 



Prof. Tracy: AVell, I have not been where I could get very extensive 

 information in regard to that, only a general impression as I have traveled 

 around in different places. I fre(i[uently hear Michigan fruits referred to as 

 the very standard of quality. Again and again, in California and in Wash- 

 ington and Idaho, the past summer, and I remember specially in Sacra- 

 mento, in Sacramento valley where they raise a large quantity of cherries 

 and apricots, also in Sonoma county — in both these places I heard gentle- 

 men speaking of their fruit in California, saying, '' Of course we don't 

 raise an^^ such fruit as you do in Michigan." I was interested at that time 

 in this statement as coming from a Californian grower, and I modestly 

 agreed with him just as unostentatiously as possible, but I thought that 

 the man had some sense. I will say, however, that there is a region that 

 we do not get any fruit from, and that is the northern part of Oregon. 

 After descending the mountains, the Coast Eange, you come into hilly 

 land, and there they raise the finest fruit I have ever seen, it seems to me. 

 It is fully e(]|ual to anything I have (^er seen in Michigan, so far as quality 

 is concerned, and fully as beautiful as any of the southern California fruits 

 ill color and size. 



:Mr. Eeid: What kinds of fruit? 



Prof. Tracy: Peaches specially, I noticed, the finest peaches I have ever 

 eaten, finer than I have had in Georgia or Michigan. It is in the northern 

 part of Oregon, just after you pass out of Washington. 



Mr. ]\Iorrill : That just brings up one idea that a good many people, if 

 they stop to think of it. will know as a fact, but of which they seldom 

 think. The northern limit of successful production of any fruit produces 

 the highest quality. It holds good in grains and vegetables, does it not? 



