60 AGRICULTURE IN THE EASTERN AND MIDDLE STATES. 



and the industries growing out of her mineral wealth, have 

 maintained the balance of power most certain to secure pros 

 perity. 



New Jersey is the market garden of two great thriving cities, 

 and fruit and vegetable-growing has there attained the greatest 

 perfection. A blackberry grower, in West New Jersey, with 

 seventy-five acres in cultivation, realized therefrom a net profit 

 of $14,000. The cranberry has proved one of the most 

 profitable crops. Sixty acres, in bearing, have netted over 

 $13,000. Cranberry lands have brought $1,000 per acre. The 

 agriculture of New Jersey has been created by facilities of 

 transportation; waste lands are being rapidly reclaimed, and 

 her growth is steady and continuous. Sixty-six per cent, of all 

 the land in New Jersey is improved in farms, whose average 

 value per acre is $86 14; the largest of any State in the Union. 



Delaware and Maryland deserve more extended notice than 

 our brief limits will allow. They are fast coming to be the 

 garden spots of America. The peach crop of these States is 

 immense the average net profit of the crop of 1871, was seven 

 ty-five cents per basket. A peach farmer of Middletown, Del 

 aware, cleared $33,000 from four hundred acres. The &quot; Peach 

 Blossom Farm,&quot; in Kent County, Maryland, contained six hun 

 dred acres of trees just coming into bearing, and was sold in 

 winter for $31,500. The same year the purchaser sold peaches 

 enough from it to amount to $52,000. One canning establish 

 ment in Dover, Delaware, consumed in 1873, of peaches, 18,- 

 000 bushels; of pears, 2,000 bushels; of tomatoes, 480 tons; of 

 strawberries, 30,000 quarts; of cherries, 30,000 pounds. 



In all these States, the advancing condition of agriculture is 

 largely due to the influence of education and the press. The 

 most influential journals and those not especially devoted to 

 this subject maintain an extensive correspondence, and give 

 considerable space to the treatment of matters of agricultural 

 interest, at homo and abroad. 



