INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 409 



Pears in Indiana and the West. 



In connection with apple orchards, our farmers are increasingly zeal- 

 ous in pear cultivation. We are fortunate in having secured to our 

 nurseries not only the most approved old varieties, but the choicest 

 new pears of British, Continental or American origin. A few years 

 ago to each one hundred apple trees, oiu- nurseries sold, perhaps, two 

 pear trees; now they sell at least twenty to a hundred. Very large pear 

 orchards are established, and in some instances, are now beginning to 

 bear. I purchased William's Ron Chretien (Bartlett) in our market last 

 fall at seventy-five cents a bushel. This pear, with the St. Michaels, 

 Beurre Diel, Beurre d' Aremberg, Passe Colmar, Duchesse d' Angouleme, 

 Seckel, and Marie Louise, are the most widely diffused, and all of them 

 regularly at our exhibitions. Every year enables us to test other varieties. 

 The Passe Colmar and Beurre d' Aremberg have done exceedingly well. A 

 branch of the latter, about eighteen inches in length, was exhibited at our 

 fair, bearing over twenty pears, none of which were smaller than a 

 turkey's egg. The demand for pear trees, this year, has been such that 

 our nurseries have not been able to answer it, and they ai'e swept almost 

 entirely clean. I may as well mention here that, besides many mere 

 neighborhood nurseries, there are in this State eighteen which are large 

 and skillfully conducted. 



Price of Nursery Trees 



The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their cultivation. Apple 

 trees, not under ten feet high, and finely grown, sell at ten, and pears 

 at twenty cents, and in some nurseries apples may be had at six cents. 

 This price, it should be recollected, is in a community in which corn 

 brings from twelve to twenty cents a bushel; wheat sells from forty-five 

 to fifty; hay at five dollars the ton. During the season of '43-'44, apples 

 of the finest sorts (Jennetin, Green Newton Pippins, etc.), sold at my door, 

 as late as April, for twenty-five cents a bushel, and dull at that. This 

 winter they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is increasingly turned 

 to apples for exportation. Our inland orchards will soon find an outlet, 

 both to the Ohio river by railroad, and the lakes, by canal. The effect 

 of such a deluge of fruit is a subject of some speculation. It will diminish 

 the price but increase the profit of fruit. An analogous case is seen in 

 the Penny Post system of England, 



A Prediction Novt Verified. 



Fruit will become more generally and largely an article, not of luxury, 

 but of daily and ordinary diet. It will find its way down to the poorest 



