138 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



ceived from the West — sold readily at ten dollars per barrel, 

 and was retailed by our merchants and market-men generally at 

 one dollar per peck. It will thus be seen that the grower, who 

 in 1862 was a seller at forty-five cents per barrel, became in 

 turn a purchaser, in 1800, at one dollar per peck — an advance 

 of twenty-four hundred per cent. 



The great superiority of the kinds of apples now in general 

 cultivation over those of seventy-five or a hundred years ago, 

 will be generally admitted. But with regard to the quantity 

 now raised in Hingham, it may be a question whether we have 

 made the progress many suppose. About the beginning of the 

 present century some of our farms — that of the late Captain 

 Ezra Whiton for instance — produced a hundred barrels of cider 

 in a single season, an amount which we think, even in this year 

 of remarkable abundance, few, if any, of our most extensive 

 orchards will equal. "We are aware of the general inferiority 

 of the fruit of the time, and of the small percentage that was 

 really marketable or suitable to be preserved for winter use ; 

 still we are inclined to believe that the number of bushels for 

 each inhabitant was then nearly or quite equal to what it is at 

 present. 



While we are making gratifying progress in the production of 

 new varieties, it must be confessed that we find it more and 

 more difficult to grow them in perfection. There is no success, 

 even with the apple, short of thorough cultivation, and to the 

 hands of those who practise it are annually passed the prizes of 

 our society. " The tree thrives best that has the frequent im- 

 prints of the owner's footsteps about it," and the man who plants 

 an orchard, and leaves his trees a prey to disease, insects, grass 

 and weeds, will seek for fruit and find none. 



Fearing Burr, Chairman. 



Pears. — The revolution in fruit culture has kept pace with 

 other changes and improvements. In pear culture many new 

 varieties have been introduced by artificial fertilization, by 

 chance discovery as in the case of the Vicar of "Winkfield and 

 others, by working on Van Mons' theory, or by root-pruning 

 and bud-nipping of seedlings, some of them of surpassing ex- 

 cellence, supplanting the most highly prized varieties of former 

 times. With the introduction of superior varieties, tastes have 



