HORTICULTURE BY IRRIGATION. 



PROGEESS IN HORTICULTURE. 



BY W. C. FITZSIMMONS. 



NO other rural pursuits, perhaps, have made so 

 rapid advances in the United States during the 

 last half century as the cultivation of fruits and flow- 

 ers. It is with the progress of fruit production and con- 

 sumption, however, that this article will be concerned. 

 Eminent dietary authority asserts that, given a cer- 

 tain environment, the quality and degree of civiliza- 

 tion of any people will be governed largely by the 

 food consumed. A Daniel Webster could scarcely 

 be evolved from a line of ancestry consuming only 

 whale blubber, nor could a Jean Jacques Rosseau come 

 from a succession of pork eaters. Given a variety of 

 wholesome food from which to choose freely, that 

 people which seeks a combination of grain, fruits and 

 meats as its staple diet may be taken to best repre- 

 sent the most staple and the most progressive de- 

 velopment along the line of the higher civilization 

 and culture. If we are to judge the American peo- 

 ple by the food they eat and such judgment is cer- 

 tainly not an unfair one we must conclude that we 

 rank high among civilized people; for probably 

 no nation on the earth is so great a consumer of vari- 

 ous food products as our own. Nor does this state- 

 ment apply merely to the aggregate consumption by 

 the people as a whole, but to individual consumption 

 as well. We are certainly not a nation of wine 

 bibbers, and in respect to the drinking of wine bear 

 no comparison whatever with the people of France, 

 Italy, Spain and many other countries. But taken as 

 food consumers we hold very high rank, and in the 

 general average, head the entire list. While we con- 

 sume a trifle less wheat per capita than the French, 

 we use vastly more corn and oats, as well as meats of 

 various kinds. We do not equal the British in our 

 liking for tea, but as coffee drinkers we lead the 

 world. Meat forms a part of the daily diet of almost 

 every American family, and fresh fruits or those in a 

 cured or preserved state, are becoming a daily re- 

 quirement of American life. In the matter of fruit 

 consumption the luxuries of yesterday soon become 

 the commonplaces of to-day and the necessities of to- 

 morrow. Perhaps no better illustration of these facts 

 can be given than to cite a short chapter in the his- 

 tory of early grape growing in the state of New York. 

 About forty-five years ago an ambitious grape 

 grower in the Kenka region of the state of New York 

 sent to market in the metropolis of that state a con- 

 signment of one hundred pounds of grapes. The 

 fruit reached its destination in good order and the 



consignee, a " hustler " in his day and generation, 

 managed to place the entire lot at figures quite satis- 

 factory to himself and his client. The dealer urged 

 the grower to increase his consignments the following 

 year and promised extraordinary diligence in dispos- 

 ing of his crop. The happy grower, seeing visions of 

 wealth in his business, sent his entire crop of three 

 hundred pounds to the city the following year; but 

 unhappily, so heavy a consigment broke the market 

 completely, and the commission dealer was obliged to 

 report his failure to place the shipment before a 

 considerable part of it had spoiled on his hands. 



The market that reeled, and actually broke down 

 under the pressure of 300 pounds of grapes at that 

 time, to-day readily absorbs more than thirty thousand 

 tons of the same variety of fruit. At that time prob- 

 ably not one American in a hundred had ever tasted 

 a cultivated grape, and it was years thereafter before 

 even that small proportion of our people had seen a 

 banana or tasted a mango or pineapple. But pine- 

 apples are now grown by the hundred thousand in 

 Florida, and more than seven hundred and fifty 

 million lemons were consumed in the United States in 

 1893. Besides a crop of nearly four million boxes of 

 oranges grown in Florida for the crop of 1892-3, and 

 about two million boxes produced in California, there 

 were imported over one million boxes of foreign 

 oranges valued at $1,695,455. The value of lemons 

 imported for the fiscal year ending with June last was 

 $4,994,342. 



Not many years ago a New York dealer imported 

 a few bananas, but found the fruit not to the taste of 

 the people, and was unable to sell a job lot of twelve 

 bunches. Finally the goods spoiled in his shop, and 

 he became disgusted with the foreign fruit trade. 

 For the year ending June 30th last, there were import- 

 ed somewhat over twelve million bunches of bananas 

 at a cost of $5,361,187. 



But it is by no means from the large consumption 

 of foreign fruits alone that we are to measure the 

 absorptive capacity of the American markets for 

 fruit products of various kinds. The entire imports 

 of all varieties of fruit cut but a small figure in the 

 aggregate consumption. American orchards and 

 vine yards are fast multiplying in nearly all parts of 

 the Union, and their rapidly increasing output is 

 annually being consumed by the American public- 

 For some years overproduction of fruit of nearly all 

 kinds grown in this country has been proved by many, 

 and the ratio of increase in orchard areas from year 

 to year has seemed to give force to the suggestion. 

 If we reflect, however, that men still comparatively 



