1 2 INTIWU UL'TION. 



been brought by proper care and culture, we are amazed at 

 the neglect, the utter and almost criminal neglect and con- 

 tempt of which they have, for two centuries, been the sub- 

 ject in the states of the South, and to a great extent now 

 are. The idea has prevailed, and still prevails, that we 

 have a claim upon nature for a fruit crop without assisting 

 in its production ; and when it fails we blame nature, the 

 trees, the soil any thing and every thing but ourselves, to 

 whom the blame chiefly belongs. Every man who has a 

 farm or a garden should raise fruit, and attend carefully to 

 his trees. If he raises it only for domestic use, he will be 

 repaid for his trouble tenfold. If so situated as to be able 

 to throw it into market, he will find it one of the most 

 profitable of his crops. Under the old plan of planting an 

 orchard and leaving it to itself, a generation passed before 

 it was productive ; but under modern culture it yields its 

 fruits in a few years. For instance, we find it stated by a 

 reliable authority, that in a single garden, apple-trees, the 

 fifth year from setting out, yielded a bushel each ; peach- 

 trees, the third summer, bore three pecks ; and a Bartlett 

 pear, two years from transplanting, gave a peck of superb 

 fruit. None of these trees were an inch in diameter when 

 transplanted, nor was their treatment better than that 

 which every good farmer bestows upon his carrots and 

 potatoes. The apple orchards of America are a striking 

 characteristic of the energy, ambition, and persistent utility 

 of a nation which is a unit in power, efficiency, and nobility, 

 which can not be found on any other portion of our globe. 

 Hon. Horace Greeley once wrote : " If I were asked to 

 say what single aspect of our economic condition most 

 strikingly and favorably distinguished the people of our 

 Northern States from those of most if not all other coun- 

 tries which I have traversed, I would point at once to the 

 fruit-trees which so generally diversify every little as well 



