CHAPTER II. 



Old Primitive Orchards. 



is no more interesting subject for investigation, 

 nor one that has puzzled observers more completely, 

 than why we are unable now to grow as healthy, long- 

 lived and productive fruit trees as our forefathers. Many 

 and various have been the theories advanced, but the most 

 general one seems to be that in the early settlement of the 

 country the vast forest area had a mysterious and potent in- 

 fluence on climate and tree diseases, and that the gradual 

 clearing of the land has, somehow or other, changed condi- 

 tions so radically that fruit trees in general, and certain 

 varieties in particular, no longer succeed as they formally did. 

 Where once in the eastern states the apple and the pear 

 attained the giant proportions of forest trees, now, as a 

 rule, they crouch and cower in valley and on hill, their 

 puny, stunted, blighting offspring a pitiful burlesque, in 

 many instances, of their grand old sires. 



I came across a statement a few days ago, that in 1721, a 

 small "settlement of forty families near Boston made three 

 thousand barrels of cider, and another New England village 

 of two hundred families made ten thousand barrels." Pre- 

 sumably they reserved fruit enough for all domestic uses, 

 fresh and dried, and this vast amount of cider was simply 

 from the surplus fruit. Remembering that those were days 

 of small family orchards, not of thousands of acres like we 

 now plant, can we anywhere find a parallel in productiveness 

 to-day? The trees that gave those enormous yields were 

 presumably either seedlings, root grafts or grown from small 

 one-year maiden trees, with few roots when set, except the 

 tap, and those doubtless cut off not far below the surface. 

 The nurseryman, with his large, fine, three and four-year-old, 

 long, fibrous-rooted trees, like those now sold, had not yet 



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