Introductory Remarks. 9 



runners, assorting and packing, and securing beforehand good mar- 

 kets, rarely fail of obtaining eight hundred to one thousand dollars. 

 Isabella grapes have commonly yielded, by good management, a net 

 profit of three to five hundred dollars annually, except in unfavorable 

 seasons, and the Delaware a much larger sum. The pear crop, 

 liable to many vicissitudes, has frequently yielded five hundred dol- 

 lars, and sometimes even double this amount ; and will doubtless 

 continue to do so to those who understand the selection of the most 

 productive and healthy sorts, and the proper treatment they re- 

 quire. 



It is not, however, merely as a source of income that the culfiva- 

 tion of the finer kinds becomes profitable. The family which is at 

 all times supplied with delicious and refreshing fruit from its own 

 gardens, has within its reach not only a very important means of 

 economy, but of real domestic comfort. An influence is thus intro- 

 duced of an exalted character ; a tendency is directly exerted to- 

 wards the improvement of the manners of the people. Every 

 addition to the attractions of home has a salutary bearing on a 

 rising family of children. The difference between a dwelling with 

 well planted grounds, and well furnished with every rural enjoyment, 

 and another where scarcely a single fruit-tree softens the bleakness 

 and desolation, may, in many instances, to a young man just 

 approaching active life, prove the turning influence between a life of 

 virtue and refinement on the one hand, and one of dissipation and 

 ruin from the effects of a repulsive home, on the other. Nor can 

 any man, even in the noon or approaching evening of life, scarcely fail 

 to enjoy a higher happiness, with at least an occasional intercourse 

 with the blossoming and loaded trees which his own hand has 

 planted and pruned, than in the noise of the crowd and tumult of the 

 busy world. , 



I* 



