No. 4.] OUR AGRICULTURAL ADVANCE. 95 



As soon as we come to such specialties as fruit, the rate 

 of increase rises in a most striking manner. The total 

 number of fruit trees has increased 90 per cent, or almost 

 three times as fast as the acreage of cereal crops, and five 

 to twenty times as fast as the area of other general farm 

 crops. The more special fruit crops — those most difficult 

 of cultivation and most uncertain of a market — have 

 developed more rapidly than the more staple fruit crops. 

 Thus, against an increase of (38 per cent in the plantings of 

 apple trees, Ave may match an increase of 85 per cent in 

 peach trees and 342 per cent in plum trees. 



These meagre figures suggest the general law. The cul- 

 tivation of the staple field crops has been extended com- 

 paratively slowly, while the cultivation of special or difficult 

 crops, or those which yield merely the luxuries of life, has 

 been extended much more rapidly. In fact, the rate of 

 development seems to stand in direct proportion to the 

 degree of specialization or refinement represented in a 

 given cro}). There are doubtless some exceptions to this 

 rule, but I believe they are such as may be safel}^ rated as 

 distinct exceptions ; perhaps they may be overlooked alto- 

 gether. 



In order to illustrate once more this law of unequal 

 development, and at the same time to apply it to a case in 

 which we are particularl}^ interested, I will give a few 

 statistics from Massachusetts. These are taken from the 

 census of j\Iassachusetts for 1895.* The first table shows 

 the percentages of increase in various classes of agricultural 

 property in the State for ten years, 1885-95. 



* Census of Massachusetts, 1895, pp. 331-333. Massachusetts Bureau Statis- 

 tics of Labor, Boston, 1899. Qaoted by Waugh, Fruit Harvesting, p. 3. New 

 York, 1901. 



