324 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



could be done by horse power. Several of bis neighbors bear 

 testimony to Mr. Travis' statements. 



The subject of the day was then taken up, viz. : " The neglected 

 fruits of our country." 



Mr. Pardee. — I intend to say a few ^vords to-day on the whortle- 

 berry. I think this fruit might be improved by cultivation, as 

 many other wild fruits have been, for instance strawberries, 

 raspberries and blackberries. All fruits and flowers improve by 

 cultivation. Some attempts have been made to cultivate the 

 whortleberry, which have not proved satisfactory ; perhaps it is 

 because the selections have not been judiciously made. There 

 is a great difference in the wild sorts — partly owing to the soil 

 they grow upon. With the same perservance as has been applied 

 to the strawberry, cultivators may be equally successful. 



Mr. Carpenter thought it would be necessary to resort to 

 seedlings to get improved whortleberries, as all of our choicest 

 fruits are seedlings ; for instance, the New Rochelle blackberry, 

 the Sickel pear. To improve fruits we must improve the tree.' 



Dr. Trimble. — I really do not think the whortleberry is 

 neglected. If you go into the country during the time this fruit 

 is ripe, }'ou will find hundreds of women and children gathering 

 them. I think they grow in the right place ; we certainly cannot 

 afford to use our gardens to cultivate this fruit. 



Prof. Renwick. — It appears to me to be the disgrace of the 

 horticulturists of America, that our native fruits and flowers are 

 either neglected altogether, or are returned to us from foreign 

 countries, after having received the improvement by cultivation, 

 which we have been too careless to bestow upon them ourselves. 

 An overreaching disposition in early life, and public employments 

 at a more advanced age, have afforded me occasional opportuni- 

 ties of seeing our fruits in their savage state, and less frequently 

 of plucking our flowers while in their short-lived beauty. The 

 wild arborescant fruit which I have met in greatest abundance 

 is the plum, and in the western part of our own State, ere the 

 plough and the mattock had destroyed them, the varieties w^ere 

 numerous, and the trees far from scarce. That some of them 

 were capable of being improved to the highest degree of excel- 

 lence, we have several instances, which I believe to be well 

 authenticated. The most interesting of these is the Gage plum. 

 According to the traditions of the American family into which 

 Thomas Lord Gage (the general of revolutionary celebrity)- 



