No. 4.] FRUIT GEO WING. 181 



There is so much, it seems to me, involved in this ques- 

 tion of varieties and their adaptability to soil, that we have 

 got to go out and study the question, each and every man 

 for himself; because no man can tell his neighbor what 

 varieties will do the best on his land. You can grow pears 

 here to perfection, — you can discount the State of Maine ; 

 but when it comes to the Baldwin, I think we can discount 

 you, although we cannot grow any such apples as I saw 

 down-stairs. There are two or three plates of Baldwins 

 that are about three times as large as we grow them. But 

 we have an advantage over you in this respect. If you cut 

 one of those apples you will find that it has already com- 

 menced to decay; it is soft under the knife, and the skin 

 peels easily ; whereas our Baldwins are tough and hard now, 

 and will not come to maturity and be ready to go to market 

 until the last of January, and from that time until the middle 

 of March or the first of April. 



Where do we grow them ? We grow them on the hill- 

 side farms on the northern part of Franklin County and in 

 Oxford County, on high, rough, rocky land, — not on land 

 that is easily cultivated. We are not putting our apple trees 

 on our level, fertile fields, where we can raise from a ton 

 and a half to two tons of hay to the acre, and where we grow 

 our corn and grains ; we are putting them on the waste 

 land, — have you any of it here, Mr. Secretary? — land that 

 we can buy to-day for from three to five dollars an acre. 

 Riding with the secretary of our Board of Agriculture one 

 day across the town of Greene, we stopped on the top of a 

 hill, and he said: "There's a piece of land I can buy for 

 three dollars an acre ; here is a piece of land that will sell for 

 three hundred dollars an acre." What made the difference? 

 Only that a dozen or fifteen years ago upon one side the 

 man had set his apple trees, cared for them, nurtured them, 

 and they wer^ yielding him so good a revenue that he could 

 not afford to sell the land for three hundred dollars an acre. 



How to cultivate upon these rocky hill-sides is a question 

 of considerable importance ; and I must say, with my 

 natural love for poultry, that I believe that is the place for 

 them. Set the trees among the rocks on a side hill, fence it 

 in, turn the poultry in there, and let them make friends of 



