EARLY HISTORY 29 



were sold in New York. Over 80,000 baskets, equal to 

 833 bushels, were brought to the city in one day by the 

 Erie Railroad alone. The average value was 3 cents per 

 basket.^' ^ As the baskets held but a third of a quart, 

 the price received was about nine cents a quart. This is 

 about the average price received now, but nine cents then 

 represented more profit than now. 



In 1849, S. B. Parsons stated that the strawberry crop 

 was "very profitable, particularly where irrigation can be 

 obtained. Nearly 5000 bushels are every season sold in 

 the city of New York, and to the cultivator the profit is 

 enormous." ^ 



In the South. — Important centers of strawberry pro- 

 duction were beginning to develop in the South, creeping 

 farther and farther down the Atlantic coast, in response 

 to the demand for earlier and still earlier berries. The 

 reverse operation — shipping northern berries to the 

 South — was reported as feasible by Nicholas Longworth, 

 in 1852. He said, "The plan of shipping them to New 

 Orleans, packed in ice, has just commenced, and may 

 eventually become an important branch of the business, 

 as they can be carried down in a week by our regular 

 packets." Very little came of this enterprise, however; 

 even now the current of trade is almost wholly from South 

 to North. 



Anne Arundel County, Maryland, which supplied the 

 Baltimore and Philadelphia markets, then was the most 

 important strawberry district in the South ; it had over 250 

 acres about 1850. These were mostly Large Early Scarlet, 

 Hart and Stewart, all varieties of F. mrginiana. By 1857 

 this county had " some 600 acres of land planted to straw- 



1 The Horticulturist, 1849, p. 102. 



2 Trans. New Haven County Hort. Soc, 1849, p. 13. 



