STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 309 



planted at our place. Those of us that were beofinning in the busi- 

 ness were cautioned by some of the older ones to move cautiously, that 

 it wouldn't be but a year or two before the blackberry business would 

 be overdone. Well, we have progressed along, as fast as we could 

 get the plants, and at the present time there are about seventy-five 

 acres planted inside the city limits of Ripon; we claim that we have 

 had success, and it has been obtained by means of thorough cultiva- 

 tion, care and protection. 



Some people ask me if the variety known as the Ancient Briton is 

 liardy and will endure our winters. I tell them it will, and that it is 

 as hardy as any known variety, to my knowledge. Again, they say, 

 ^'The idea of laying them down is a great expense, so much so that it 

 takes off all the profit." That is a greater bugbear in the eye than it 

 is when you come to go to work at it and try it. The expense of laying 

 ^own an acre of blackberries I am not at present prepared to give, but 

 I can take a five acre patch, and give you some idea of the expense 

 connected with its cultivation. In removing the old brush, laying 

 the plants down, and covering for winter, the expense on five acres 

 was thirty -six dollars; the further care of them, raising them up in 

 the spring, and preparing them for fruiting, the expense would be 

 about twenty more, making about fifty dollars to insure a crop on five 

 acres for the next year. In the last seventeen years that I have known 

 this variety to be cultivated in that way, I haven't known it to fail. 1 

 claim that an outlay of fifty dollars on five acres of ground insures me 

 a crop of one thousand dollars worth of fruit. This can be sub- 

 stantiated by my salesbook. 



The fruit of this variety is one of the best for shipping I have ever 

 seen; it is a large, firm fruit. Mr. Tuttle has extended an invitation 

 to send two or three men over to our place to look at our mode of 

 cultivating and our different patches of berries, and we shall be glad 

 to meet any persons that you may see fit to send there, and we 

 guarantee that we will show them as fine fields of blackberries as they 

 can find anywhere. • 



A Member. What distance apart do you set the canes ? 



Mr. Hamilton. We plant in rows, seven feet apart, three feet in 

 the row; occasionally some eigljt feet by three feet; some plant eight 

 feet by four feet. A trellis is placed on each side, and the wires and 

 stakes are about twenty feet apart. 



A Member. What is your mode of cultivating ? 



Mr. Hamilton. It is to keep the ground as rich as we possibly can. 



