46 YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 



The soil and climate of the South, contrary to common opinion, 

 are favorable to the culture of fruit. There is an orchard in 

 Georgia of 9,500 pear-trees, and another in Mississippi of 

 15,000. Many fruits nearly worthless at the North are render 

 ed valuable under the warmer climate and genial sun of the 

 South. One gentleman at the South sends North every year 

 from seven to ten thousand dollars' worth of peaches, before 

 they are ripe in the middle States. We can approximate to 

 an estimate of the fruit crop of the United States from these 

 examples, but who can tell what will be its importance when 

 the numberless young trees planted in the Eastern and Middle 

 States when the vast vineyards and orchards now flourishing 

 in the great Valley of the Mississippi, and in the Southern 

 States, shall have arrived at maturity ? 



Col. Wilder next passed to the inquiry, " What are the best 

 means of promoting this art and science ?" First, Thorough 

 drainage and the proper preparation of the soil. The former 

 is the great distinguishing feature of the terra-culture of the 

 Nineteenth Century. It is to agriculture what the telegraph 

 and steam are to commerce, and to the progressive civilization 

 of the world. It is an indispensable condition of success in 

 pomology. A pear-tree standing in drained, deep, and thor 

 oughly-worked soil, produced in a single year eight hundred 

 perfect specimens of its fruit, while similar trees, outside the 

 influence of such cultivation, would hardly yield one hundred 

 each, and these of inferior quality. Second, Appropriate soil 

 and location. No tree should be placed where one of the same 

 species had grown and decayed. A treatise which should 

 specify upon scientific principles the particular locality and 

 kind of soil adapted to each species and variety of fruit, would 

 be a desideratum which some one would do well to supply. 

 Third, Climate and meteorological agencies. Climate as well 

 as soil, controlled the quality of our fruit. In cold, wet seasons, 

 fruit was likely to be watery and insipid ; in fact, this was so 

 marked as to entirely change the flavor of really luscious vari- 



