16 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



such extent that she may yet be said to be in her infancy. And no 

 one who has not visited and traversed her wide borders — no one 

 reared and trained on soils where four-sixths is rock — can have, but 

 by traveling over it, any conception of the wealth stored up in the 

 soil of the West. 



We speak here more of this from believing, that while the East 

 may yield her supplies liberally, attended by the care. and expense 

 of supplying fresh food annually, the West will ere long far outstrip 

 all ; as she only needs among her sons more study of the nature of 

 plant and tree to bear the palm in producing any fruit. 



It is for the West then, more especially, that our work is destined. 

 Although ourself, reared at the East, and all our life familiar with her 

 fruits, her soils and capabilities, we shall yet endeavor to blend the 

 one with the other, that our work may be applicable there as here, 

 even as we cherish at this day our " loved old home," with her 

 rough, rocky surroundings, incentive only to the greater perfection 

 and action of mind ; in that, self-dependence is made apparent from 

 day to day. 



Before the West was, i. e., settled by white man, the impression 

 prevailed, among other errors connected with fruit culture, that "he 

 who plants pears, plants for his heirs ;" and we well recollect being 

 told when a boy, on planting out a young pear-tree, that possibly 

 our children might eat of it, but we, never. Such prophecy, how- 

 ever, failed in our case, as nearly all others, for we have eaten often 

 of it. And now, whether we attribute it to the locomotive age, to 

 the active minds of our eastern brethren, or the spontaneous growth 

 of the West — aided by her industrious denizens — we hardly wait 

 for the season to come around ere we eat of the fruit ; our own 

 experience having been to receive trees and plant them in March, 

 and eat of the fruit in November following. Let this be attributable 

 to what it may, such is now the impress, that no one buys a city 

 lot, intending to keep it over one year, but he plants trees upon it, 

 expecting and reaping the fruit thereof 



All this is encouraging ; but there is also a dark side in fruit cul- 

 ture gradually coming on us, to be met only bj||the general diftusion 

 of knowledge on this subject ; a knowledge that, as before remarked^ 

 will enable us to compete skilfully with deficiencies or over-luxu- 

 riance in soil ; to know the insects destructive, and their habits, that 

 we may secure our products from their ravages ; and a just appreci- 

 ation of the nature of trees, that we may know how to shape them to 

 the withstanding of our changeful climate. 



As under each appropriate head we give somewhat of the olden 

 history of fruits, our remarks here will relate mainly to their intro- 

 duction and advancement to Ohio and the West. Previous to 1796, 

 there was very little other than the natural fruit of the soil culti- 

 vated iK Ohio ; and not until about 1820 or '22, was there any con- 



