HORTICULTURE 



HORTICULTURE 



1513 



for shipping. J. R. CariiwcU hiis been the princi- 

 pal historian of Northwest horticulture. He came out 

 in the early days of the fruit industry and is still Uving. 

 He has been very influential in building up the fruit 

 industry in the Pacific Nortliwest. 



The apple. 



There was practically only one general horticultural 

 commodity, at least in the northern states, a hundred 



1855. An early cider-nuU in Pennsylvania. 



years ago, and that was the apple. Pears, peaches, cher- 

 ries, quinces and some other fruits were common, but 

 there was httle thought of marketing them. Even the 

 apple was an incidental or even an accidental crop. 

 Little care was given the trees, and the varieties were 

 few, and they were rarely chosen with reference to 

 particular uses, beyond their adaptabihty to cider and 

 the home consumption. In parts of the East, very 

 ancient apple-tree relics still stand, some of them per- 

 haps existing from Colonial times (Fig. 1853). 



Thacher, writing from Plymouth in 1821, says that 

 "the most palpable neglect prevails in respect of proper 

 pruning, cleaning, and manuring round the roots of 

 trees, and of perpetuating choice fruits, by engrafting 

 from it on other stocks. Old orchards are, in general, 

 in a state of rapid decay; and it is not uncommon to 

 see valuable and thrifty trees exposed to the deprecia- 

 tions of cattle and sheep, and their foliage annoyed by 

 caterpillars and other destructive insects. In fact, we 

 know of no branch of agriculture so unaccountably and 

 so culpably disregarded." Were it not for the date of 

 Thacher's writing, we might mistake this picture for 

 one drawn at the present day. 



If one may judge from the frequent and particular 

 references to cider in the old accounts, it does not seem 

 too much to say that this sprightly commodity was held 

 in greater estimation by our ancestors than by our- 

 selves. In fact, the cider barrel seems to have been the 

 chief and proper end of the apjjle. Of his thirty chapters 

 on fruit-growing, Coxe (1817) devotes nine to cider, or 

 forty-two pages out of 253. John Taylor's single epi.s- 

 tle devoted to horticultural matters in the sixty and 

 more letters of his "Arator" is upon "Orchards," but it 

 is mostly a vehement plea for more cider. "Good 

 cider," he says, "would be a national saving of wealth, 

 by expelling foreign liquors; and of life, by expelling the 

 use of ardent spirits." In Virginia, in Taylor's day, 

 apples were "the only species of orchards, at a distance 

 from cities, capable of producing sufficient profit and 

 comfort to become a considerable object to a farmer. 

 Distilling from fruit is precarious, troublesome, trifling 

 and out of his province. But the apple will furnish 

 some food for hogs, a luxury for his family in winter, 

 and a healthy liquor for himself and his laborers all the 

 year. Independent of any surplus of cider he may 

 spare, it is an object of solid profit and easy acquisition." 

 As early as 1647, twenty butts of cider were made in 

 Virginia by one person, Richard Rennet. Paul Dudley 

 writes of a small town near Boston, containing about 



forty families, which made nearly 3,000 barrels of 

 cider in the year 1721 ; and another New England town 

 of 200 famihes, which supphed itself with "near ten 

 Thousand Barrels." Bartram's cider-mill, as it exists 

 at the present day, is shown in Fig. 1S54. An old mill 

 in Pennsylvania is shown in Fig. 1855. It is a ponderous 

 pine log, more than three feet through, raised and low- 

 ered by means of a great screw. "These presses" 

 according to C. F. Shaw, "were 'neighborhood' affairs 

 in cider-making time and the farmers would rise very 

 early that they might reach the press before their 

 neighbors, and so not have to wait long before their 

 turn to have their cider made." It was not until well 

 into the past century that people seem to have escaped 

 the Eurojiean notion that fruit is to be drunk. Jarvis 

 writes (1910) of Connecticut conditions that in "the 

 first half of the last century many commerical orchards 

 of modest size were in existence, but they were com- 

 posed mostly of seedhng trees or 'native fruit,' the prod- 

 uct of which was used largely in the manufacture of 

 cider." 



There have been several marked alternations of fervor 

 and neglect in the planting of apples since the first set- 

 tlement of the country. Early in the eighteenth century 

 there appears to have been a great abundance of the 

 fruit; but in 1821 Thacher declared that "it is a remark- 

 able fact that the first planters bequeathed to their 

 posterity a greater numljer of orchards, in proportion 

 to their population, than are now to be found in the 

 old colony," and he attributes the decline in orcharding 

 largely to the encroachment of the "poisonous liquor" 

 of the later times. Under the inspiration of Thacher, 

 Coxe, Kendrick, Prince, Manning, and the Downings, 

 orchards were again planted, and later there was 

 another period of decline in the East, following the 

 aging of these plantations. Two reminders of the 

 Downings are shown in Figs. 1856 and 1857, made 

 from photographs taken by the writer some twenty or 

 more years ago. 



Apple trees were very early planted in the New 

 World. On Governor's Island, in Boston harbor, a few 

 apples were picked in 1639. Trees were carried far 

 into the frontiers by the Indians and probably also by 

 the French missionaries, and the "Indian apple 

 orchards" are still known in many localities even east of 

 the Mississippi (see, also, Appleseed, Johnny page, 1563). 

 At the opening of the nineteenth century, the Early 

 Harvest, Newtown Pippin, Swaar, Spitzenburg, Rhode 

 Island Greening, Yellow Bellflower, Roxbury Russet, 

 and other familiar apples of American origin were widely 

 disseminated and much esteemed. Apples had begun 

 to be planted by settlers in Ohio before 1800. In 1817, 

 Coxe could recommend a list of "one hundred kinds 

 of the most estimable apples cultivated in our coun- 



1S50. Unc uf the old Downing test apple trees as it stood 

 about 25 years ago. 



