The Apples of New York. 9 



Mixed Orchards. It is pretty certain tliat grafted fruit was 

 known in the earhest orchards to a hniited extent only. In an 

 appencHx to Cobhett's American edition of Forsyth's Fruit Trees, 

 pubHshed in Albany, 1803, there is a communication from a member 

 of the State Agricultural Society, Peter W. Yates, in which he 

 remarks concerning the practice of grafting and budding (inocu- 

 lating) in America : 



" The practice of grafting and inoculating in America is but of 

 modern date. It was introduced by Mr. Prince, a native of New 

 York, who erected a nursery in its neighborhood about forty years 

 ago. But since the late American revolution others have been insti- 

 tuted in this and some other parts of the United States. Mr. 

 Livingston has lately established one, not far from the city of New 

 York, which can vie with some of the most celebrated ones in 

 Europe. May he, and others who have undertaken that useful 

 branch of business, meet with encouragement and success." 



Although his idea that grafting and budding were introduced in 

 America by Mr. Prince is based upon a misapprehension of the 

 facts, Mr. Yates' statements are of interest because they tend to 

 show that prior to the Revolutionary war the planting of orchards 

 with grafted trees from the nursery was not common in the vicinity 

 of Albany, one of the oldest settlements in the state. But there is 

 reliable evidence that grafting was practiced to some extent by 

 American colonists long before the establishment of the Prince 

 nurseries at Flushing, Long Island. Taylor^ says : " Certain it is 

 that in 1647 the apple is recorded as grafted upon wild stocks in 

 Virginia; while in 1686 William Fitzhugh, in describing his own 

 plantation, mentions ' a large orchard of about 2,500 apple trees, 

 most grafted, well fenced with a locust fence.' By the close of the 

 seventeenth century there were few plantations in \^irginia without 

 orchards of apple, peach, pear, plum, apricot and quince. * * ■)= 

 Frequent importations of seeds, scions and grafted trees, together 

 with propagation of those already noticed, both by seeds and grafts, 

 brought the orchards of New England up to such point that Dudley, 

 in 1726, stated in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, ' our 



HJ. S. Dept. Ag. Yearbook, 1897:308. 



