STATE POMOLOGICx\L SOCIETY. 65 



FRUIT GROWING, EAST AND WEST. 



Prof. F. C. Sears, Amherst, ]\Iass. 



As you probably all know, I have done more or less talking 

 during the past three or four years, on the subject of apple 

 growing in New England. I have told people that there was 

 money to be made out of it, if properly conducted, and have 

 shown my faith in the business by going into it myself. And 

 I have insisted that New England had very distinct advantages 

 over the W^est. I still think so. But I want to tell you con- 

 fidentially that for the first week of my stay in the Northwest 

 I was staggered, and began to consider whether the Bay Road 

 Farm (the farm Professor W'augh and I have at Amherst) 

 could be worked over into a poultry farm or a game preserve. 

 For I never saw before and may never see again such beautiful 

 fruit. I had expected to see fine Newtowns and Spitzenburgs, 

 but to see Baldwins and Rhode Island Greenings, absolutely the 

 most beautiful things in the apple line, was rather disconcerting, 

 for I thought they were New England specialties. I said to my- 

 self, "My boy, you had better go home and apologize to the 

 orchard men of New England for attempting to lead them 

 astray." This impression of their beautiful fruit stayed with 

 me during my entire trip, and will always stay with me. Their 

 best fruit is a glorious sight and a thing to be proud of, and 

 I take off my hat to the men who grew it. But the longer I 

 stayed there and the more I studied the matter, and in particular 

 the more I got behind the scenes and talked with the growers, 

 the more "comfortable" I felt and the more sure I was that 

 I should not need to offer that apology to the fruit growers 

 of New England. 



My second and most vivid and lasting impression was that 

 every man, woman and child of those sections was interested 

 in apples. I never saw anything like it ! Not only is the whole 

 county, of such a section as Wenatchee or Hood River, one 

 vast orchard, divided up merely by the roads which run through 

 it. but every business in the county is conducted by and for the 

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