EARLY HORTICULTURE IN NEBRASKA. 201 



whether we would do well here or not, but we made a beginning. 

 We had a great deal to learn. We learned that our old time 

 favorites of the east could not be raised here. In figuring up, 

 we found that it cost us about one dollar per tree to learn what 

 could be grown here. We had to pay good prices for our stock. 

 I remember I paid one dollar each for the~ first Concord grape 

 vines that I bought and planted. The price did seem high. 

 But when, in a few years, I gathered the delectable fruit from 

 the vines and sold what I had to spare at ten cents per pound, 

 I felt amply repaid. Now you are compelled to take ten to fif- 

 teen cents per basket for it. Of course, there has been an in- 

 creased supply and demand. But I say yet, that good number 

 one fruits do not go begging today. They bring good prices. 

 People do not think of the price when they are getting good 

 fruit. Now to keep on growing this good fruit, the depreda- 

 tions of the insects have got to be gotten rid of. Orchards ought 

 to be kept in better condition than they are. Diseased and 

 feeble trees are the hiding places of insects. If the trees were 

 kept in better shape, I don't think we would have the insect 

 depredations that we have today. 



The young men and young women of this day and age of the 

 world have advantages that we old folks never had. See all these 

 improvements on this University Farm. There was no Profes- 

 sor of Horticulture in those days with a fund of information at 

 his command for our benefit. Then each man was his own hor- 

 ticultural professor, and our school was the expensive school of 

 experience. Those were the days when it meant not only hard 

 work, but self sacrifice as well to be a horticulturist. 



I have been very much interested in ascertaining who planted 

 the first apple trees in the state. My friend Mr. Masters 

 planted his first trees on the sixteenth day of March, 1855. 

 That same fall a certain Mr. Bobst went down into Missouri 

 and brought back a bundle of apple trees on horseback tied be- 

 hind his saddle. These were planted on the twentieth of Sep- 

 tember, 1855. I have been given to understand that a Mr. G. B. 

 Lore planted some apple trees at DuBois, in 1853, some of which 

 are still alive and bearing fruit. So far as I know these three 

 plantings were the earliest of any in Nebraska. 



I have been associated with the horticultural movement in 



