lo The Apples of New York. 



apples are without doubt as good as those of England, and much 

 fairer to look to, and so are the pears, but we have not got all the 

 sorts. * * * Our people of late years have run so much upon 

 orchards that in a village near Boston, consisting of about forty 

 families, they made near ten thousand barrels (of cider).' 



" Perhaps the earliest recorded grafted tree brought from Europe 

 (that of Governor Endicott is stated to have been a seedling) was 

 the Summer Bonchretien, planted by Governor Stuyvesant, in 

 1647, i" New Amsterdam. It is said to have been brought from 

 Holland, and its trunk remained standing on the corner of Third 

 avenue and Thirteenth street. New York city, until 1866, when 

 it was broken down by a dray. Many of the earliest introduc- 

 tions of named varieties of the pear, including White Doyenne, 

 St. Germain, Brown Beurre, Virgouleuse, etc., were made by the 

 French Huguenots, who settled about Boston and New York 

 shortly after the revocation of the Edict of N'antes in 1685." 



It was at Flushing, Long Island, in one of these Huguenot settle- 

 ments, that the Prince nurseries above referred to were established, 

 about 1730. Near here the famous Newtown Pippin originated. 



While grafted fruit was certainly known in some orchards of the 

 early settlers and sometimes an entire orchard was planted with 

 grafted nursery trees, yet, taking the state as a whole, in the earlier 

 days more often the orchards were of seedling trees, with only 

 a portion of them top-worked to improved kinds, and so the 

 ordinary farm orchard was made up partly of " common " or of 

 " cider " apples and partly of grafted fruit. A great diversity of 

 varieties of grafted fruit was usually included in this class of 

 orchards, because the object was to furnish the home with fruit 

 from the first of the season through the autumn, winter and the 

 spring, and even till early summer. Transportation facilities being 

 crude, there was little encouragement for shipping apples to distant 

 markets. When the farmer went to town he would often take with 

 him a few bushels of apples, to offer in trade for articles which he 

 wished to purchase. The other ways of disposing of surplus apples 

 were in the manufacture of cider, boiled cider, and vinegar, or in 

 drying the fruit. For the latter operation the kitchen stove was 



