WAYNE COUNTY— THE ORCHARD OF NEW-YORK. 



WAYNE COUNTY— THE ORCHARD OF NEW-YORK. 



BY R. G. PARDEE, PALMYRA, N. Y. 



Nothing has attracted more attention lately in the markets of New-York, than the 

 superb fruits of Wayne county. The pears especially — the fairest and most delicious Doy- 

 ennes or Virgalieus to be found in that market — come not from the Hudson, from New- 

 Jersey or Pennsylvania — but, barrels upon barrels, from Wayne county. The soil of 

 that county, abounding in lime and potash, seems so especially adapted to the growth of 

 all the fine fruits, that the orchards and fruit gardens of that central portion of New- 

 York will, with very little care, produce not only the greatest abundance for the owners, 

 but enable them to export more fruit than any county in the state. We are much obliged 

 to Mr. Pardee for an opportunity to put on record the natural orchard fertility of this 

 portion of New-York. Our pages have lately had so many more accounts of the pests of 

 the orchard, in the shape of insects, that a stranger to the actual products of our orchards 

 might almost think the blight and the curculio left us neither pear nor plum, from one end 

 of the land to the other, while the fact is just the contrary. Ed. 



Mr. Downing — It is quite pleasant to comply with your request, to furnish the read- 

 ers of the Horticulturist with some of the interesting facts connected with the cultivation 

 of fruit in Wayne county. 



The county comprises a strip of land, say 17 to 20 miles wide, by 38 to 40 long, 

 bordering on Lake Ontario, between Oswego and Rochester. Sixty-five years ago it was 

 a heavy timbered forest, uninhabited by the white man. At the present time that forest 

 is almost subdued, so that there are very few acres of waste land to be seen in all its 

 length and breadth, particularly in the western or older part, where, indeed, I may say 

 there is hardly an untillable hill, or an unrecoverable spot of low ground, or a stony acre 

 visible, so that Prof. Norton justly recorded of it — " This is a superb country, with won- 

 derful natural advantages." 



The face of the land, except from the Lake up to the Ridge Road, some four or five 

 miles, is gently rolling, mostly from east to west. The soil is a mixture of sandy and gra- 

 velly loam, with sections moderately mixed with clay; is easily tilled, and the crops are 

 very certain. 



The soil and climate of Wayne county prove to be particularly favorable to the growth 

 and perfection of all our various kinds of fine fruit. The grape, the raspberry, the black- 

 berry and the strawberry, with civil attention, amply reward our care. 



The pear has, to a very great extent, escaped or recovered from the effects of the pear 

 blight, and the old standard pear trees around us have, during the last season, borne so well, 

 that one firm in this village alone, shipped eastward last fall, between one hundred and fifty 

 and two hundred barrels of the delicious " Virgalieu," as the White Doyenne is familiar- 

 ly called in market. A few years hence our county will greatly increase its exports of 

 this article from our young pear orchards, for the Messrs. Yeomans of Walworth, have al- 

 ready set out of this variety alone, over four thousand trees on the quince, and E. Black- 

 man, Esq., of Newark, has also fifteen hundred trees for market production, besides nu- 

 merous smaller orchards, I might name, including not only this favorite variety, but from 

 ten to fifty or seventy other of the choicest varieties. 



It has not yet come to my knowledge that the Virgalieu has, in our county, shown 

 symptoms of cracking or degeneracy, although such may possibly be the ease 



The peach is a great favorite in our county, and well it may be, for it grows almost spon- 



