196 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



" In conclusion, we will state that it is our conviction that these fruits 

 will meet with a cordial reception by the public, and for private gardens 

 be preferred to the rank-growing high blackberries; in the market they will 

 readily command a higher price than any other blackberry, but as their 

 season is so much earlier they will not come greatly into competition. For 

 a table fruit they are very fair — sweet, juicy and luscious — no setting of 

 the teeth on edge." 



Little, however, seems to have come from Dr. Miner's dewberries. 

 They were discussed in the Fruit Growers' Society of Western New York; 

 mentioned in several of the agricultural papers of the country and even 

 received some praise in the Gardeners Chronicle published in England. 

 But Dr. Miner did not push the sale of plants and eventually they seem to 

 have been lost sight of although more or less cultivated for twenty or thirty 

 years under the name Miner's Seedlings. 



The first dewberry to receive wide recognition seems to have been the 

 Bartel, brought to notice by Dr. Bartel, Huey, Clinton County, Illinois. 

 L. H. Bailey,' who has given the early history of dewberries much attention, 

 gives the following history of the Bartel in a bulletin of the Cornell Experi- 

 ment Station. 



" The story goes that the plants appeared in an old cornfield upon his 

 farm, and some of the berries were so large that he conceived the idea 

 of selling plants. He procured a lithograph of the berries — which did 

 ample justice to the fruit, — described the methods of growing them and 

 for a time disposed of considerable stock. The introducer was an old 

 man at this time and was one of those clever and picturesque individuals 

 who often lend an interest to a neighborhood. The first printed record 

 of this berry appeared in December, 1875, in Purdy's Fruit Recorder (p. 182). 

 This is a communication from ' T. C. Bartles, of Clinton Co., Illinois,' and 

 is headed ' Bartles' Mammoth Dewberry.'- The description of the berry 

 runs as follows: * This is a very fine berry, ripening from the last of Jione 

 imtil the middle of August. The fruit is very large, rich and juicy, slightly 

 acid, but not so sour as the blackberry. When ripe it is black, and is suffi- 

 ciently solid to bear shipment with safety. I have had berries over two 

 inches in length and one inch in diameter. They are a perpetual bearer, 

 from the time they begin to ripen (in ordinary seasons) until the last of 

 August — having blossoms on the same vine simultaneously with the ripe 

 fruit. They are very prolific, yielding in a fair season from sixty to eighty 



' Cornell Sta. Bui. 34:300. 1891. 



2 The name of this dewberry is variously written Bartle, Bartles', Bartell and Bartells', but I have the 

 evidence of a neighbor of the introducer, who is now dead, that he speUed his name Bartel. Perhaps the 

 orthography of the name may have been confused because of another family in Clinton County which 

 spells its name Bartels. 



