EEPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FRUITS. 301 



New England fruit, the apple, is becoming every 3'ear more exclu- 

 sively the farmer's product, the limited grounds in the cities and 

 larger towns not affording sufficient space to grow the trees. Pre- 

 viously to 1876 an abundant crop was a disadvantage to the growers 

 as the over-supply reduced the price below a paying one. In 

 that year there were exported to foreign markets three hundred 

 and forty thousand barrels. Since then the number of barrels 

 has reached one and a half million in a single year, and the ship- 

 ments the present year have sometimes in a single week exceeded 

 eighty thousand barrels. The farmers have not yet realized the 

 changed conditions and do not make fruit a principal or leading 

 crop. It is generally an incidental and not infrequently^ an acci- 

 dental one. The fact that we have in this State thousands of 

 acres of cheap lands admirably adapted to the cultivation of 

 fruit — most favorably situated to meet the demand for export 

 trade, coupled with the fact that the farmers can send their fruit 

 from Boston to the London market at less cost than the growers 

 living within forty miles of that city, ought to make fruit one of 

 the leading agricultural products of the State. 



E. W. Wood, 



Benj. G. Smith, 



O. B. Hadvten, ( Fruit 



Jacob W. Manning, 



Chas. F. Curtis, [ Committee. 



E. P. Richardson, 



Warren Fenno. 



