88 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



give them good cultivation, and he will begin to reap the benefit 

 of liis trees much sooner than he anticipates. A tree grows 

 fast if you don't think much about it. My place is about ten 

 miles out of Boston. Some thirty years ago I was in Boston 

 for eight or ten years, and at that time there was no conveyance 

 by railroad between the two places. One spring a gentleman of 

 Boston gave me a few scions of a specially good pear, and, as I 

 had some leisure time, I undertook to walk ten miles home to 

 graft those scions. It was a warm day, early in May, and when 

 I had walked aboiit two-thirds of the distance 1 was a little 

 fatigued, and sat down upon a stone under the shade of a willow 

 tree. Before resuming my walk, I took out my knife and cut 

 a cane from the tree, and when I got home, as I went out into 

 the garden to set those scions, I stuck that cane down in a moist 

 place near the kitchen sink, and it took root and grew. After 

 three or four years I transplanted it to the side of the street, 

 and that tree (the cane that I walked with part of the way from 

 Boston,) is now thirty inches in diameter. I mention this 

 merely to show that it does not take so long a time to raise a 

 tree as many people think. Therefore I advise every man, 

 especially the young students at the Agricultural College, if 

 they go to farming, to plant trees when they are young. They 

 will not only derive a great deal of pleasure from it, but they 

 will be sure to enjoy the benefit of the trees before they arrive 

 at the common age of man. 



The Chairman. I confess to a delinquency of duty in not 

 calling upon my friend, Rev. Mr. Clift, who is immediately 

 before me, and whom I should have recognized before ; for I 

 have known him in former years as one of the most eminent 

 fruit-culturists with whom I was acquainted. 



William Clift, of New York. I have always taken you, Mr. 

 President, for authority in fruit matters, and I am sorry to be 

 obliged to differ from you a little this evening. I do not share 

 the apprehensions that have been expressed in regard to the 

 over-production of the grape. It may be very true that in the 

 particular localities where the grape is made a specialty there 

 is a greater production than can be marketed in the immediate 

 vicinity, and it is true that this year and last more grapes have 

 been sent to the New York market than could well be disposed 

 of. They have come there by the ton, and they have been sold 



