FRUIT committee's REPORT. 3 



regard to convenience and nearness to the homestead. Herein lies the 

 secret of the fact that Cambridge carries away three-fourths of our 

 Pear prizes, year after year. Her soil, her low, level tract so near to 

 the water, and yet so well drained, secure to her such advantages that 

 only good culture is necessary to produce the largest results. 



Now the conclusion from this is not that the general culture of a 

 variety of fruits is impracticable and must be abandoned. Very far 

 from this. Our soil and our climate permit a fair degree of success 

 wherever ordinary opportunities are secured. Again, the great pro- 

 portion of home grown fruit is for home use, and the producer is more 

 than content with ordinary size and average success. Probably it is a 

 more general custom in Massachusetts than in any other state of our 

 country that each owner of a freehold has a few Pear and Apple trees, 

 two or three Grape Vines, and the complement of small fruits. This is 

 a wise economy, resulting in moral and social, as well as pecuniary 

 gain. Still it is desirable for our large city markets that the most 

 extensive, practical and scientific experiments in fruit culture be 

 attempted. With the Apple, for example, (a long and too tedious 

 experiment for most men of enterprise) how desirable is it that men of 

 capital should select some extensive pasture slopes, of which our State 

 furnishes an ample supply, such as are just suited for this fruit; so far 

 removed from city precincts as never to be endangered by the fever of 

 land speculations. An orchard planted on a site thus selected, and 

 being sufficiently extensive to require the constant care of a judicious 

 cultivator, would surely be a source of pride and profit to the owner, 

 and, in itself and in its influence, a public benefaction. 



The Apple is mentioned, because so many have been discouraged 

 with this fruit. But it is folly to enumerate the many failures. A 

 hundred failures do not prove so much as one decided success. If the 

 Messrs. Clapp can keep a perfectly healthy and productive apple orchard 

 in the very centre of the cankerworm district, so ca« we all, if we put 

 forth the same energy, and secure the same conditions of success. If 

 Mr. Wellington can this year and continually produce, in open air, as 

 superb Isabella grapes as ever ripened on the banks of the Ohio, the 

 same result is possible to each of us, just as surely as is the axiom sure 

 that like causes produce like effects. 



The main lesson which we would draw from the adverse influences 

 of the season, from the many failures and the honorable and decided 

 exceptions, is this, that we study with more care the requirements of 

 each kind of fruit, and, wherever extended culture is intended, for 

 market purposes, that the location be selected solely Avith reference to 

 the adaptedness of the site to the particular fruit determined upon; that 

 whenever we are compelled to choose a site not naturally adapted to 

 the various kinds desired, our first aim should be to make as near an 



