254 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



You go to the extreme "West, and you get an apple of enormous 

 size, but it is very soft and flavorless. That is true of all the 

 varieties of apple cultivated there, to a consideral)le extent. 

 Western apples lack the flavor that Massachusetts apples have. 

 1 have never seen any apples grown anywhere, that were equal 

 to Massachusetts apples for excellence of flavor. They are not 

 so large as "Western apples, but larger than the Maine apples. 



Then, again, there is no fruit so generally consumed and so 

 important as the apple. I raise a few pears, having some 110 

 or 115 varieties, but not a twentietli part what ray friend Colonel 

 "U^ilder has. I have a pear orchard of some ftve or six hundred 

 trees. I do not want to discourage any one from raising that 

 very excellent fruit. Raise it in your gardens, and about the 

 cities, where it does well, and supply the market. But pears 

 do not compare with apples for culinary purposes. You caa 

 hardly sell cooking pears. People do not bake them or stew 

 them, or cook them in any of the great variety of ways that the 

 French do ; but we shall grow to that. But apples are used in 

 a variety of ways ; you could hardly do without them ; and for 

 the last three or four years, when apples have been a partial 

 failure, some of us have paid six, eight and ten dollars a barrel, 

 and made up our minds, that as long as we could earn the 

 money, we could not do without them, and would not do with- 

 out them. 



Now what shall we do ? Shall we annually send thousands 

 of dollars to "Western New York and States further west for this 

 fruit, not only buying the apples and sending our money out of 

 tlie State, but paying for the barrels, many of which are wasted 

 afterwards and the money lost, when we could just as well 

 raise them ourselves ? I say that is wrong. "We ought not to 

 purchase what we can produce profitably. Tliere are many 

 things we can purchase and had better purchase than raise. I 

 had the notion that corn was one of them, but I iiave changed 

 my mind on that since I heard the address of Dr. Nichcils. 

 "Wheat is not one of them. I have raised first-rate wheat here, 

 and you can raise it just as well. You can raise rye every 

 year. 



If what I have said be true, shall we not produce apples in 

 this State ? There is no difficulty about it. You can just as 

 well grow apples as oak-trees. Do you ask me where and how ? 



