62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



by your people for fruit that might be produced here at 

 home. 



The o;reat markets for fruit in the United States are east 

 of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio, but the very 

 best of them all are in New England. Noticing the packing 

 of fruit in California, in Colorado, in Texas, in the lower 

 Mississippi valley, in Georgia and in Florida, I have noticed 

 that if there was anything extra produced they sent it on 

 here to New England, knowing that here is where they 

 can dispose of their very choicest fruit at the highest prices, 

 because here the people are ready to pay the most money for 

 it. The reason is that wherever any class of people ])ecome 

 more refined and more cultivated in their tastes the greater 

 consumers they are of all horticultural products ; and New 

 England is where the people are the greatest consumers of 

 fruit and horticultural products of every kind, — greater 

 than in any other section of the country and probably of the 

 world. You have that market right here at home, and why 

 is not Massachusetts doing more to meet the demands of 

 that market ? Nobody can say that the market is ever over- 

 supplied with choice fruit. There is often an abundance of 

 inferior grade, selling at prices which do not pay for the 

 culture, but rarel}' is the market supplied, and never over- 

 supplied, with the choicest productions. 



The present system of fruit culture here in Massachusetts,, 

 speaking in a general way, is that on every farm there are 

 more or less fruit trees, apples especially, which, as the 

 chairman well said in his opening address, receive no care 

 whatever. The trees are simply put into the ground, and if 

 they do not get broken by some stray cattle in the first two 

 or three years of their lives they may in time be able to 

 "paddle their own canoe," and even under the most adverse 

 circumstances give some return to their owners. They pay 

 no tax on the trees, do not spend any time or money in 

 pruning them, fertilizing them, or cultivating the soil, and 

 when the time comes to sell the fruit tliey send it to the 

 nearest local market, packed in a hap-hazard way, and take 

 what they can get for it. Very often it is a disgrace to the 

 market and to any farmer who brings it there. 



Small fruits are grown more as a specialty, and often pay 



