24 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1894. 



who tamed the savage Indian and a more savage wilderness ! fold 

 your arms and look on, as train after train crosses a wide conti- 

 nent and a stormy ocean to deposit its luscious burden in that 

 opulent market which we should have long before forestalled ! 

 Ought we to feel assured of a crop in the year to come, resting 

 idle, toiling not, nor sweating to turn a hair in mid-summer 

 heats when thinning should not be denied ? Shall we utterly 

 decline to plant new trees, as did our fathers, upon the produce 

 of whose tireless industry we are content supinely to vegetate ! 

 Are we satisfied to exhaust our principal, consuming its sub- 

 stance ? 



Commenting upon the actual results from export of almost 

 every variety of Pears, Plums, Peaches, Grapes, &c., &c., from 

 California, that grand exponent of all forms of approved Terrse- 

 culture — the Country Gentleman — declares that " the experiment 

 is a success ; and has demonstrated that California can furnish 

 Covent Garden market with fruit just as well as the Isle of 

 Jersey, and at prices that admit of profitable competition." And 

 then the Editor, writing with all the shrewd sense, if not with 

 the actual pen of John J. Thomas, enlarges forcibly upon the 

 text that I have so often striven to impress upon the Horticultur- 

 ists of this noble old County of Worcester, whereof the superiors 

 throughout our broad Eepublic may be counted as the Saints in 

 Sodom : 



" Do the fruit-raisers of the East intend to permit the Pacific 

 Slope to monopolize this export trade ? If not, it assuredly be- 

 hooves them to improve enormously the average market value of 

 their own product, by more vigorously fighting their fungous and 

 insect foes, more liberal thinning of the crop as it grows, more 

 unflinching rejection of all imperfect specimens from what are 

 supposed to be standard-grade lots, and much more careful 

 handling and packing. We saw last week at Syracuse, California 

 pears and peaches bringing from seven to nine times as much 

 money as those raised in the great fruit regions of central and 

 western New York, not three hours from the retailer's shop; 

 and, what is worse, the California fruit was worth the difler- 

 ence. The specimens were of very uniform size, every one per- 

 fect, and so carefully selected and packed that the dealer said he 

 never lost a single one by rotting. The New York lot was of 



