EDITOR'S TABLE, 



time. The Rural New Yorker contains the very able and interesting speech of the Presi- 

 dent, J. J. Thomas ; it will be read with improvement by all who cultivate fruits. lie 

 said : — 



"The question is perhaps more easily asked than answered, why it is that while no farmer 

 would think of planting a field of corn to grow among the grass of a meadow, there are so 

 many who will place valuable young trees, which have cost them more than a hundred 

 times as much as the corn they have planted, in the midst of a dense grass sod ? Or who, 

 having once j)lanted them in good soil, wholly abandoned them to weeds ? However, dear- 

 bought experience is enforcing its lessons, and good cultivation is becoming more frequent, 

 and better understood. * * * 



" I have taken the pains, the present season, to measure the products of a few apple trees, 

 set out about six years ago, then two years from the graft. The soil had but one light 

 manuring for many years, and was naturally more sterile than most of our common farm 

 soils. But it had been kept under good clean cultivation. Two of the Di/er apple bore 

 each a bushel and two-thirds ; a Baldwin yielded three bushels and a half; a tree of the 

 Minister, three bushels ; a Belmont, two years older, bore five bushels ; and a Northern Spy, 

 eight years transplanted into a large hole containing a portion of compost, bore nine bushels. 



"By keeping the ground clear of all vegetable growth in an orchard or fruit garden, 

 whether it be a planted crop, or a self-sown crop of weeds, which is the best and most profit- 

 able course (unless it be sometimes that a green crop for manure may be advisable); by 

 adopting this course, five or six dollars an acre are all that need be required, where one or 

 two ploughings and five or six harrowings are given annually — afl'ording an almost incred- 

 ible supply of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life combined ; wliile without such 

 cultivation, perhaps not a fifth part of the same real value would be afforded. How strange 

 that any one should attempt to save the few by wasting the hundreds ! Squandering the 

 dollars to save the cents, most emphatically! * * * 



"I hold the inherently wise as well as time-honored rule, that every tree is to be judged 

 by its fruits — by its intrinsic worth, whether Europe or America is the place of its origin. 

 By this rule we all pronounce the older foreigners, the Bartlett, Virgalieu, Louise Bonne of 

 Jersey, and Flemish Beauty, and such newer arrivals as the Rostiezer, Giffard, and Beurre 

 d\4.n/ou, as worthy companions of the Seckel, the Tyson, the Brandywine, the Washington, 

 Sheldon, and Lawrence, and other native Americans ; while among the apples, the Astrachan, 

 Dyer, and Gravestein will compare well with our Melon, Hawley, Spitzenburgh and Swaar. 



" The truth is, we have a long road to travel before we reach a perfect list of fruits ; and 

 we need all the assistance we may be able to procure from all sources. * * * 



" I have taken a little pains to estimate the time required for all our present nurseries in 

 the whole Union to fui-nish a ten acre orchard to every farm of a hundred acres, in all the 

 States east of and contiguous to the Mississippi River. On the supposition that all the 

 ground occupied by nurseries in densely planted fruit trees amounts to ten thousand acres, 

 their entire and continued jiroducts would be required for three hundred years to fill out all 

 these ten acre orchards. But many estimate that only one-ffth of all the trees set out ever 

 reach a successful bearing condition — in which case fifteen hundred years would be needed 

 by our present nurseries to plant one-tenth of our entire territory with orchards." * * 



Mr. Stone said : " I knew one tree of the Baldwin apple that two years ago produced 

 twenty-eight bushels, that sold for $40. Our Agricultural Committees estimated one acre 

 in orchard as equal in vah;e to twelve in other crops, but he thought the figures large enough 

 at five to one." 



Mr. Barry said : " Of pear orchards we have but very few in our country. One is that of 

 Mr. Thaddeus Chapin, of Canandaigua, which has now been set nine years. Six years 

 after being set out, lie sent some fruit to New York, and obtained $8 a barrel for it. The 

 next year he had thirty barrels of fine pears from his three acres. For those he obtained 

 S15 a barrel, making $450. This was his own price, and after paying him for them, the 

 market-woman remarked that if he had asked $18 she should have paid it (juite as willingly. 

 The year before last he had fifty barrels, which he sold in New York for from $18 to $20 a 

 barrel — making nearly a thousand dollars. This last year his crop was partly a failure, 

 which he thinks was owing to planting corn in his orchard, and close iip to the trees. When 

 his pears were nearly grown they dropped off without ripening, and he lost nearly all." 



The Chester County Horticpltural Society's schedule of premiums for 1856 has been sent 

 us, embracing much that is of interest and value. This spirited society deserves high com 

 ndation for what it lias accomplished, and the taste it has infused in its neighbor 

 must be much in West Chester worthy of being communicated to the public thr 

 columns. 



