80 THE HORTICULTURE OF 



season. Now we have in variety these delicious fruits, by 

 the facilities of transportation, for two or three months, 

 receiving from the South in a single day five thousand 

 bushels, and from the single city of Norfolk, in Virginia, 

 sixteen thousand bushels, and from our own town of 

 Dighton ten thousand bushels in a year. Then not 

 a single hybridized fruit of the strawberry had j^een 

 produced, so far as we know, in our land ; now so great 

 has been the increase in this period that my register 

 contains the names of nearly four hundred kinds of 

 strawberries that have been under cultivation in my 

 day. Then there were no American grapes cultivated 

 in our gardens except here and there a vine of the Ca- 

 tawba and Isabella ; now there are more than two hun- 

 dred varieties of American grapes in cultivation, and 

 grapes may be had from our shops during more than 

 half of the year ; and so extensive are our vineyards 

 that, in addition to the production of the grape for 

 the table, California alone produces ten millions of 

 gallons of wine, of which large quantities have been 

 exported to Europe, South America and Mexico, some 

 of which is mulled over and returned for consumption. 



Then the cultivation of the pear was limited to a few 

 varieties, since which the gardens of Manning, Hovey, 

 the writer and others have embraced more than eight 

 hundred varieties of this noble fruit. Then no exports 

 of fruit of any note had been made. Now, Boston 

 alone has shipped over six hundred thousand barrels of 

 apples in a year, and the export of fruit from this 

 country has amounted -to nearly three millions of dol- 

 lars in a year. 



Did space permit, we should allude to the wonderful 

 exhibitions of the Massachusetts Horticultural, the 

 American Pomological, and other societies. Nor can 

 we omit to mention the grand improvement in orna- 



