1 82 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



much improved in size and its crops very abimdant." Under " Uses " 

 Kenrick' adds: " The blackberry is considered a pleasant and wholesome 

 dessert fruit if used with moderation; it is used in pies, tarts, &c. A jelly 

 is made of the blackberry of considerable medicinal efficacy in nephritic 

 disorders. It is singular that a fruit so productive as the tall blackberry- 

 should be so little cultivated. Both species may be propagated either 

 from seed or from layers." 



A still earlier reference to the blackberry as a cultivated plant is found 

 in the New York Gardener in 1829, reprinted in the New England Farmer,''' 

 May, 1829. It is quoted to show the status of blackberry culture a 

 hundred years ago: 



" The Blackberry, or Bramble, one of our native shrubs, well deserves 

 a place in the farmer's garden, and will liberally repay the expense of 

 cultivation. It should be propagated and pruned in every respect like the 

 raspberry, but being somewhat larger, requires more room. It is very 

 much disposed to throw off yoiing shoots from the roots, and unless great 

 care is taken to destroy them, they will spread, and fill the ground, and soon 

 make an impenetrable wild. But this is no difficult task, if the space 

 between the rows is well wrought, and kept, as it ought to be, quite free 

 from grass or weeds. 



" The bramble, as well as the several kinds of raspberries, do not ripen 

 their fruit at once, but in succession, for several weeks, as if designed to 

 court our notice, and bountifully to reward the care we may bestow upon 

 their ciiltivation, by a frequent offer of their bounties. The fruit should 

 be regularly gathered as it comes to perfection, and be directly used after 

 being picked ; for although they may remain good on the bush a few days 

 after being ripe, if kept in the house a single day, they will be found to have 

 lost much of their delicious flavor. 



" A plantation of these shrubs will come to perfection in three or four 

 years, and if nursed as above directed, will continue fruitful for eight or ten 

 years. It should then be grubbed up, and entirely renewed. Two years, 

 however, before this, a new quarter for this fruit should be prepared." 



One gathers from the account just published, and from similar items 

 from the agricultural papers of the time, that blackberries came under 

 cultivation little by little early in the nineteenth century. Probably the 

 nurslings of nature could not supply the demand as cities, towns, and tilled 

 fields destroyed the hedge-rows of wild plants. It was inevitable that 

 sooner or later some one would attempt the cultivation of so delectable a 

 fniit as the wild blackberry for the markets. The first attempt of magnitude 



■ Ibid. 337. 



^Netu Eng. Farmer 7:351. 1829. 



