166 FRUIT OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 



directing that progress, the occurrences of this meeting 

 sufficiently testified. 



The premiums offered by the Society on this occasion 

 amounted to the sum of £1600, and the number of per- 

 sons who visited the show-yard was immense. Thirty 

 thousand entrance tickets (sixpence each) were sold on 

 the first day of the show, besides three thousand mem- 

 bers' tickets, (one dollar each,) which admitted the mem- 

 ber and his family. 



At three P. M. I delivered my address, in a large open 

 tent, to an audience of several thousand people, by whom 

 it was warmly and kindly received. 



The fruit-show was not so fine as was anticipated, 

 owing to the season having proved an unfavourable one 

 for fruit in the Northern States generally. By the resi- 

 dents of western New York this is regarded as the finest 

 fruit-country in the world. The mollifying influence of 

 Lake Ontario — which has an area of 6300 square miles, 

 an average depth of 500 feet, and never freezes as Lake 

 Erie does — extends, more or less, over the whole level 

 or slightly undulating region occupied by the lower por- 

 tion of the upper Silurian rocks, on which the rich soils 

 of this part of the State rest, and from which they are 

 generally formed. From Oswego, near the east end of 

 Lake Ontario, to Niagara, on the Canadian borders, this 

 region forms a belt about 40 miles wide by 150 miles 

 long, and over it the early frosts of autumn, which are 

 so injurious to fruit-trees, are comparatively unfelt. It 

 is on the eastern part of the Lake Ontario shore, towards 

 Oswego, however, that the grape and peach ripen the 

 most surely, and produce the finest fruit. 



The old apple-country of the United States — the home 

 of the Newtown pippin, the Spitzeraberg, and other 

 highly prized varieties — is on the Atlantic border, 

 between Massachusetts Bay and the Delaware. But 

 western New York and northern Ohio have now entered 



