198 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



fruits we now enjoy such as Hovey s, Hooker s, Long- 

 worth s, McAvoy s, Peabody s, Burr s, Wilson s, and other 

 new strawberries; Brinkle s raspberry, Houghton s goose 

 berry, Lawton s blackberry, and an almost endless list of 

 apples, pears, plums, cherries, and other choice fruits and 

 plants, that somebody has had the patience and perse 

 verance to grow from the seed of old sorts. 



4t Jumping from Ravenswood that village of beautiful 

 residences on the bank of the East River, opposite the Isle 

 of Penitence to East Brooklyn, we shall see as we ride 

 out Division avenue, alias Broadway, a considerable num 

 ber of small gardens and cultivated spots ; but most of the 

 land lies waste and useless to the thousands of starving la 

 borers that throng the streets in pursuit of employment. 

 Not that they are unwilling to work, or the owners of the 

 land unwilling that it should be cultivated, but because the 

 absurd practice prevails of letting cows, horses, hogs, goats, 

 geese, ducks and fowls run at large, pirating their living 

 upon the unfenced lands, and frequently breaking into in- 

 closures. Thus no one can plant a little patch of garden 

 vegetables, which in some cases would save the family from 

 begging or being a public charge. And it is almost an 

 annual charge to fence in a lot, since the material will be 

 stolen for winter fuel, unless closely watched. And so a 

 wide breadth of rich soil, extending as far out as the land 

 has been cursed by city lot surveyors, is a worthless waste, 

 with only here and there a rich green spot, to show us it is 

 not by nature a barren. 



&quot; One of these green spots we notice on our left hand, 

 some three miles from Peck Slip Ferry, is a pear nursery, 

 where more than ten thousand trees were in bloom last 

 spring. Tfce most of the trees are grafted upon quince 

 stocks, and are growing vigorously in a clayey loam soil, 

 deeply prepared and highly manured. The trees grown 



