46 The Principles of Fruit -(/rowing. 



very minor appendage to the general farming. For a 

 generation or two of trees the insect pests were not 

 common. There were no good markets, and the fruit 

 sold as low as twenty -five cents a bushel from the 

 wagon -box. In fact, it was grown more for the 

 home supply than with an idea of shipping it to 

 market. Under such conditions, it did not matter if 

 half the crop was wormy, or if many trees failed and 

 died each year. Such facts often passed almost un- 

 noticed. The trees bore well, to be sure, but the 

 crop was not measured up in baskets and accounted 

 for in dollars and cents, and under such conditions 

 only the most productive trees left their impress upon 

 the memory. The soils had not undergone such a 

 long system of robbery then as now. When the old 

 orchards wore out, there was no particular incentive 

 to plant more, for there was little money in them. 

 Often the young and energetic men had gone west, 

 there to repeat the history, perhaps, and the old 

 people did not care to set orchards. And upon this 

 contracting area, all the borers and other pests which 

 had been bred in the many old orchards now concen- 

 trated their energies, until they have left scarcely 

 enough trees in some localities upon which to perpet- 

 uate their kind. A new country or a new industry is 

 generally free of serious attacks of those' insects 

 which follow the crop in older communities. But the 

 foes come in unnoticed and for a time spread unmo- 

 lested, when finally, perhaps almost suddenly, their 

 number becomes so great that they threaten destruc- 

 tion, and the farmer looks on in amazement. 



