ANNUAL MEETING AT LEXINGTON. " 147 



Our trees, too, from same cause are thought to be in good condi- 

 tion for the winter, having ceased to grow early and were ripe in new 

 wood to the very tips before winter came. 



We had no peaches and most parties are so thoroughly discour- 

 aged by successive failures of this delicious fruit as to cease planting 

 the peach. In counties southeast of Springfield, peach trees are being 

 liberally planted. 



Pears are not largely planted, but some of our orchards contain a 

 few hundred-trees — they were not visited by blight to any considerable 

 extent last year or this — gave a fair crop of good fruit, which sold 

 readily at good prices. There is at the nurseries a call by planters for 

 more pear trees for further planting. But for profit, our orchards con- 

 sist mainly of the apple, and in our largest orchards more recently 

 planted we have but few varieties — such as are found to pay best. 



The treatment of our orchards, as complained of in former papers, 

 is not yet much changed — rapid, large extension is the rule with many, 

 leaving the afterwork too much for nature, as they call it, to perform. 

 Tliere are many very gratifying exceptions to this nature system or 

 practice of neglect, whose results must, by demonstration, work a 

 change which is beginning already to be observed. This class of men 

 plant new orchards to some suitable crop, potatoes, corn, etc., which 

 requires about such cultivation as fruit trees want, and the result is 

 very satisfactory. This treatment is even carried by some into the 

 mature orchards in full bearing — the result there is a healthful, steady 

 growth. A more satisfactory crop of apples, freer from insect injury 

 — larger in size and nearer perfect fruit every way, and this fruit sells 

 for these few men on the market at better prices, sufficient to bring 

 buyers into the orchard without coaxing, and the premium received for 

 good apples pays amply for the use of the plow. AVhereas the orchards 

 neglected and left to nature, without pruning hook or plow, yield as 

 best they can apples of size to be expected — most difficult to pick at 

 harvest and the sales each year of cider apples increases from such or- 

 chards, which begins already to verify the statement formerly made at 

 one of your meetings, that barrels^vould not long be wanted by men who 

 neither prune nor cultivate — since cider apples and worms are shipped 

 in bulk and handled with a scoop, and, I will say, shaken from the 

 tree. 



I may be allowed to say that our orchards are at least in the right 

 place. Southwest Missouri has no malaria to sicken men or trees. 

 The atmosphere, soil and altitude are so adapted to fruit growing as to 

 make the orchard an assured source of large profit. ^When the general 



