AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 151 
tarines, twelve apricots, thirty-six plums, four quinces, thirty-seven 
native grapes, twenty-two foreign grapes, twenty currants, thirteen 
gooseberries, eighteen raspberries, four blackberries, and twenty-five 
strawberries. The list of one hundred and twenty-six varieties rejected 
in 1849 has grown to six hundred and twenty-five, viz: one hundred 
and twenty-six apples, three hundred and fifty-one pears, five apricots, 
thirty-two cherries, two grapes, thirty-one plums, three raspberries, and 
seventy-five strawberries; making a total of one thousand two hundred 
and five varieties of fruit on which the society has set the stamp of its 
approval or rejection. 
While the results achieved by other societies are of undoubted local 
value, the work of this national society is a common possession to every 
inhabitant of our wide land. Perhaps the most important and valuable 
work it has accomplished, is its catalogue of fruits adapted to the various 
sections of our country. Into this is condensed the substance of all its 
proceedings and the various State reports. This list is in a progressive 
state, and with every revision it may be expected to approximate more 
nearly to perfection. 
The number of delegates attending the first meetings at New York 
was 107, while our present list of members counts 311, from almost every 
State and Territory. The cultivation of fruits has so greatly increased 
since the formation of this society that it is difficult to convey any idea 
‘ of its expansion to those who have not watched it from the beginning. 
At that time the work of testing the best varieties of the pear had not 
generally commenced, and the few pear orchards planted were on a very 
limited scale, while now we have orchards of tens of thousands of trees, 
and single varieties planted by the five thousand. The native grape, 
as to its improvement, and consequently its cultivation on an-extensive 
_ seale, may almost be said to have been created since the origin of this 
society. Among these new varieties are those so well adapted to every 
part of the country, that we, find vineyards covering in the aggregate 
thousands of acres, where formerly not one was to be seen. The plant- 
ing of grapes for wine was then hardly thought of, and California, where 
nearly four million gallons of wine were made in 1870, was then practi- 
cally an unknown land. Indeed, in the whole history of horticulture 
nothing has ever been witnessed like its progress on our western coast. 
In regard to the grape, who can doubt that California, with its high 
temperature and dry atmosphere, fully equal to the most favored por- 
tions of Europe, with suitable lands of almost boundless extent, where 
grapes are produced at as littie cost as anywhere on the globe, and 
where in some sections of the State wine can be stored in open sheds in- 
stead of costly cellars, without injury, is destined to become one of the 
greatest grape-growing and wine-producing countries of the earth? Al- 
ready some of their wines, made from foreign grapes, compare so favora- 
bly with the sherries and Burgundies of Europe as to leave no doubt of 
their being legitimately classed with these, and with which, considering 
their age, they do not suffer by comparison. The fig grows almost spon- 
taneously, and bears abundantly ; avd as soon as the process of drying 
is understood, it will become one of the most important products of the 
soil. The culture of the almond and olive, as well as of silk, gives prom- 
ise of profitable results. 
In regard to progress in the cultivation of small fruits we select the 
strawberry as the most important. In the first select list of this society 
only three sorts were mentioned, while the present list contains twenty- 
five kinds approved for cultivation in some part of the country, not to 
meution the hundreds of others possessing more or less merit which 
