270 ANNUAL REPORT. 



I had one thing to encourage me. In the early settlement of the 

 country, at the beginning of the century, seedling orchards were 

 grown, and up to between 1840 and 1850 native apples of this 

 class, including some kinds of considerable excellence, were pro- 

 duced in great abundance. These old orchards, many of them at 

 least, became feeble with age, and all trees, old as well as young, 

 were badly wrecked by being loaded and broken down in a heavy 

 sleet and wind storm in 1848. After that the attempt was made 

 to start new orchards, but instead of using seedling trees, as the 

 pioneers did, young stock was bought from pedlars of New York 

 trees,all of them varieties totally unfitted to the climate, except an 

 occasional Fameuse, Talman Sweet and Red Astrachan, and these 

 not strictly iron-clad. Repeated failures with these New York 

 trees led many to believe that the climate had changed, owing to 

 the removal of the forests. As a matter of fact this has made the 

 climate warmer rather than colder, taking the yearly average, and 

 there is no ground to believe that the winters are colder. 



It was long before it began to be understood that all kinds of 

 apple trees are not hardy alike, and that we must have hardy 

 kinds. When this did begin to be realized, nobody seemed to 

 know where to look for hardy sorts. When I began I determined 

 to test everything called hardy, and in the first three years I had 

 set out from three to eight trees each of over a hundred kinds, re- 

 ported hardiest in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Canada. 

 Among these I found only three kinds that did not seem to mind 

 anything about the climate. These were the Duchess of Olden- 

 burgh, Tetofsky, and Peach of Montreal. In the meantime I was 

 corresponding with western fruit growers, and searching the rem- 

 nants of the old seedling orchards wherever I could hear of any. 

 Out of a great many sorts from the west, I found only Plumb's 

 Cider that endured our climate well, until I got the Wealthy, and 

 these two to-day, constitute the only really valuable contributions 

 to my orchard from the west. Many others indeed do tolerably 

 well, but "tolerably hardy" fruit trees in a climate that demands 

 "ironclads," are not the source of much satisfaction. 



In 1870, I obtained from Washington cions of about twelve 

 kinds of the Russian apples imported at that time, and in growing 

 these, I soon realized that I had struck upon a strain of apples 

 that cared nothing for cold weather. From these, and from others 

 of the same importation which I got from those who had received 

 them, the question of hardiness beiug eliminated, I have had only 

 to choose for quality and season. For very early fruit, the only 



