&TATE rOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 113 



think an orchard just set is worth $50 to $80, a bearing orchard 

 $200 to $700. The great range depending on varieties and condi- 

 tion of trees. Some orchards yield nearly nothing on account of 

 treatment. I know of one orchard of three acres, which has 

 paid $15,000 in cash in the last thirty years. With interest, total 

 amount in work to credit of this three acres of apple trees is 

 $20,000. The Society should teach fruit growers how to market 

 their own apples." 



A. E. Andrews, Gardiner, has 300 trees and one-half are in 

 bearing. '*The Society should not recommend so many varieties," 

 he writes. 



M. C. Hobbs, West Farmington, has about 1,000 trees now set. 

 Not more than 100 of them are in bearing. His last crop was 125 

 barrels, which he sold for $230. 



J. M. Pike of Wayne writes: "I have 2,200 apple trees in all, 

 about twenty acres, (all Baldwins and Northern Spy), three acres 

 of them are twenty-five or thirty years old and the rest of them I 

 have set within ten years ; all New York trees, they produced last 

 year about fifty barrels of very nice fruit. My three acres of 

 bearing trees will have paid for the last ten years interest and 

 taxes on $2,000. I have six acres set ten years in one lot that I 

 would not sell for $3,000 Twelve years ago it was an old sheep 

 pasture worth al)out $6 per acre, every tree Baldwins true to name. 

 I have had very good success with fruit trees and am much 

 interested in fruit culture." 



Charles I. Perley of Cross Hill in the town of Vassalboro has a 

 thrifty orchard of 600 trees. He enjoys his orchard and is sure it 

 is paying him well for labor and capital. 



J. B. Wheeler of Corinth tells an interesting story of fruit cul- 

 ture in the following words which need no comment : 



*' I now have four hundred apple trees, about half in bearing. 

 Fifty of them I bought with my farm in 1850, and that year they 

 bore about a peck of grafted fruit. About fifty that are seventy- 

 five years old I have since bought with adjoining farms and think 

 I did not pay a dollar more for the farms than I should had there 

 been no apple trees on them. The other three hundred trees I 

 raised and set myself during the last forty-three years and have 



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