222 HAMPSHIRE, FRANKLIN, AND 



One or two of the early governors of Massachusetts attempted 

 to introduce the cultivation of apples, pears, and some other 

 fruits from England ; but the common people were too busily 

 engaged with Indians, disease, famine, and the breaking up of 

 a new soil, to attetnpt the cultivation of such luxuries. It is 

 said that many of the best varieties of apples, pears, plums and 

 cherries then known, were introduced into the eastern part of 

 the Commonwealth, by a company of Huguenots, who fled to 

 this country after the revocation of the edict of Nantz. 



Until within a very few years, there has been no general 

 cultivation of fruit within the limits of this society, and it is 

 now far short of what the health, comfort and wants of our 

 community require, or a profitable investment, would justify. 

 In the latter point of view, it is believed that no other cultiva- 

 tion by the farmer or horticulturist can compete with it. 



A few years since, a gentleman in this Commonwealth set 

 112 apple trees two rods apart. On the eighth year he gath- 

 ered from them 228 barrels of fruit, and on the tenth year the 

 average quantity to each tree was four or five barrels. During 

 all this time, he cultivated between the trees, peaches, currants 

 and vegetables enough to pay for all the manure and labor ex- 

 pended on the land. A Dix pear tree in Cambridge, produced, 

 in a single year, fruit to the value of forty-six dollars. A Har- 

 rison apple tree in Orange, N. J., produced one hundred bushels 

 of apples in a single year. The fruit of a Dubois apricot tree, 

 in 1846, was sold for ninety dollars. A single grape vine in 

 Darby. Pa., produced in one year seventy-five bushels of grapes, 

 which sold readily for seventy-five dollars. There is now 

 standing in Greenfield, an apple tree, from which were gathered 

 in a single season, 110 bushels of apples. Eight hundred dol- 

 lars have been realized, in a single year, from one acre of cran- 

 berries 



We cannot encourage the fruit culturist, to expect a realiza- 

 tion of such sums as the above in all cases ; but what has 

 once been done can be again accomplished, and they afford 

 abundant evidence to prove that the cultivation of fruit can be 

 made more profitable than any crop of grain, grass or vegeta- 

 bles, which the farmer can grow. With the facilities which 



