INTRODUCTION. 11 



this section of the State, and it has borne a price, for ten 

 past years, not upon the average above ten dollars per ton." 



Mr. R. F. Williams gathered from an orchard of one acre 

 onli/, the present year, from grafts set four years ago in very 

 old and decayed trees, two hundred barreis of first-rate 

 Baldwin apples. This statement is more valuable as showing 

 how readily old trees may be changed from producing worth- 

 less fruit to the production of that which is of the best quality, 

 than as giving evidence of a remarkable product. 



To show how long a time is required to bring trees from 

 the nursery into bearing, I will give another statement, which 

 is about a fair example of the success of good cultivation 

 among us: 



''John A. Lowe, Esq., of Exeter, set sixty trees about 

 three years from the bud in his orchard in the spring of 1843, 

 and forty more in the fall of the same year. They bore a 

 few apples in 1847 and 1848. In 1850 he gathered six 

 barrels; in 1851 twenty-one barrels; and in 1852 fifty bar- 

 rels of fruit of the best quality." 



A writer in the New Eiigland Farmer states that he knows 

 "an orchard oi forty Baldwin apples that yielded more than 

 three hundred barrels of fruit of the best quality the past 

 season, and about the same quantity in the season of 1850." 



He says farther, " The ground about these trees has been 

 kept in a perfectly pulverized state for half a dozen years or 

 more, and manured like a garden." It should be borne in 

 mind that the Baldwin usually produces every other year 

 (unless highly manured). 



It would be a fair estimate that fifty trees, which would 

 stand upon an acre at the distance of about thirty feet apart, 

 would produce an average annual crop of sixty barrels of 

 apples, worth at least sixty dollars. It is not uncommon to 

 see a single tree bear ten barrels of fine apples, and instances 

 have occurred where sixteen barrels have been gathered at 

 once from a single tree. At the lowest rate of product that 

 any man in his senses, who has ever properly cultivated an 

 orchard in this country, would estimate as a common crop, an 



