GEORGE S. WILLIS'S ADDRESS. 399 



will health and vigor be restored, but many of the destructive 

 insects will disappear, like a horde of savages before the well- 

 appointed forces of the scientific tactician. 



The comparative appearance of our own uncultivated or- 

 chards and fruit yards, and those carefully cultivated in the 

 neighborhood of Boston, establishes the correctness of these re- 

 marks. Upon soils sterile by nature, less provided with the 

 materials of vegetation, except as furnished by labor, and ex- 

 posed to blighting east winds, the trees in that neighborhood 

 show all the indications of thrift and health ; well cultivated, 

 well pruned, free of excrescences and parasites, with rinds 

 smooth and glistening ; they form a rebuking contrast with 

 our own, neglected, gnarled and moss-grown as they are. 



Behind in no other, we should be behind no longer, in this 

 line of rural industry. New varieties should be introduced, 

 better modes of training adopted, and progress made as fast as 

 the operations of nature, hurried on by the rural arts and the 

 appliances of science, will allow. Our stores of comfort and 

 social happiness would thus be increased and our physical en- 

 joyments multiplied. Thanks to the intelligence and zeal 

 which have impelled some few, at least, of our farmers to em- 

 bark in this enterprise. May heaven pour down the fertilizing 

 showers, and distil the richest dews upon their nurseries, and 

 imbue us all with their spirit. 



When we reflect that the wild crab, is the apple tree from 

 which the improved and multiplied varieties of this most valu- 

 able fruit have all sprung, by engrafting the selection of seedling 

 trees, and a studious attention to soil and culture, we are not 

 merely called upon to admire the patience and ingenuity which 

 have wrought out results so happy and wonderful, but to follow 

 on with increased zeal and diligence, in the same line, for fur- 

 ther discoveries and requisitions. Fourteen hundred new va- 

 rieties, the pure results of cultivation, are enumerated in the 

 catalogue of this fruit, more than three hundred of which are 

 of decided excellence for the table. Patient, ingenious, learned 

 diligence, could, in a single generation, duplicate this number. 



The improved varieties of the pear are little known among 

 us, less known than the short-horn Durhams, though better 



