74 



REMARKS. 



r~\ROBABLY no portion of the State has a larger acreage 

 /T| in orchards than that section of which Marion, Clay, 

 \ * Richland, Jasper, Effingham, Wayne, and Cumberland 

 counties form a part. The setting of orchards in this locality 

 has proceeded with astonishing rapidity during the past five 

 years. These young orchards will begin to come into bearing 

 this season, and in the course of five years more this section of 

 the State will have made a name for itself in the apple markets 

 of the world. 



Take the partial statistics for the counties of Richland, 

 Clay, Jasper, and Marion, as here given, with a total of about 

 70,000 acres; with 50 trees to the acre this would amount to 

 3,500,000 trees. At an age of ten years these trees are capable 

 of bearing on an average of ten bushels of apples to the tree, 

 making a total for these four counties, of 35,000,000 bushels, 

 or 11,700,000 barrels; or, to reduce to carloads, we would 

 have 60,000 cars. Think of this for a moment, 2,000 train 

 loads of 30 cars each, and we have a faint idea of what the 

 future of Illinois orchards, taken for the whole State, will be. 

 These counties by no means monopolize the apple lands of the 

 State, for many other counties follow them closely in the acre- 

 age devoted to apple growing. 



The orchards are planted mainly to a limited number of 

 varieties that are proven to be well adapted to the several 

 localities, and being no longer an experiment we can look for- 

 ward confidently to the future of these orchards with a feeling 

 that they will not disappoint their owners so far as production 

 of fruit is concerned. 



The figures to which attention has been called are startling 

 in the extreme, and if the owners are not wide awake they are 

 liable to find themselves in the possession of a large crop with 

 no provision made for a market for the product. 



