HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



fruit culture, had no existence. While strawberries, raspberries, currants and 

 perhaps a few other berries were found in some gardens, the principal 

 family supply of these fruits was drawn from the fields and woods. The 

 regular marketing of strawberries in New York City had its beginning with 

 a few wagon loads of little Scotch Runners from Hackensack, N. J., brought 

 across the Hudson River in sailing sloops, as often as twice a week, wind and 

 tide permitting. These were peddled through the streets in small, handled 

 splint baskets, strung on long poles, carried by strong negroes, across their 

 shoulders. Then were about 3 weeks the limit of the strawberry season, while 

 now it begins with the Florida crop in January and closes with that of Canada 

 at the end of July. Similar conditions prevailed in regard to other small fruits. 

 Not a few men and women now living remember the time when there were no 

 Hovey or Wilson strawberries, nor any other kinds of improved small fruits nor 

 grapes offered in our markets. Small fruit culture of a definitely organized and 

 systematized business is of distinctively American origin; and in the development 

 of small fruits no material progress was made until the improvement of the native 

 species was begun. All these fruits went through an initial stage of depending 

 upon foreign varieties. Following this, an area of improvement set in, during 

 which, by careful breeding of the native species, and infusion into them of the 

 improved European blood, by hybridization, strains better adapted to American 

 conditions were obtained. This change from almost total reliance upon intro- 

 duced varieties to a marked supremacy of sorts originated here has taken place 

 almost wholly during the second half of the 19th century. The entire list of 

 strawberries recommended in the American Pomological Society's first fruit 

 catalog consisted of Large Early Scarlet, Hovey and Boston Pine ; in Blackber- 

 ries of New Rochelle; in grapes of Isabella and Catawba, with Diana for trial; 

 Black Caps had no recognition among cultivated fruits. A glance at present 

 '^atalog will readily demonstrate the pomological progress in this direction. 



The radical changes in conditions during the last decades of the 19th century 

 along agricultural and commercial lines have been followed by the general dis- 

 tribution ot many insect pests of a serious character. In commercial transactions 

 the dangers have been so great along certain lines that many state laws have 

 been enacted to prohibit the distribution of such insects as the San Jose scale 

 and others of a dangerous nature. Ability to successfully combat noxious 

 insects is a problem of the most vital importance to farmers, fruit growers, 

 nurserymen, gardeners, florists, millers, grain dealers, transportation companies, 

 merchants, grocers, housekeepers and others. This is especially true of the 

 fruit, nursery and grain industries. The use of hydrocyanic acid gas and carbon 

 bisulphide, two very powerful insecticides, has largely solved these problems. 



In no one of the appliances of science teaching to fruit growing has the Amer- 

 ican so clearly the advantage of the European as in the knowledge of insect and 

 fungous pests and of the means of dispatching them. The superiority of the 

 American fruit as a general market product is due in a considerable degree to 

 fumigating and spraying. 



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