2G BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



I will not attempt to discuss the various diseases to which 

 our fruit-trees and fruits are subject, or the noxious insects 

 that infest them. Some of the former are well understood, 

 and may be successfully avoided, and most of the latter can 

 be controlled by simple and well-known devices. It inures 

 to the benefit of the intelligent cultivator that choice fruits 

 require skilful care both in their propagation and management. 

 It is not a haphazard business, but the reward is for the per- 

 severing, the painstaking, for those who have the faculty for 

 fruit-culture. While all are fond of good fruit, but few succeed 

 in a marked degree. Not only must the farmer himself have 

 the skill, but all the laborers employed must get a tolerable 

 knowledge, or they will wreck the best laid plans. We would 

 not discourage any one who desires to raise good fruit ; for it 

 can be done, and here in New England, with the same degree 

 of skill that in Massachusetts is required to raise good crops, 

 or breed good cattle. Trees, as requiring a longer time to 

 grow and mature fruit, need more patience and a little 

 more enthusiasm to bridge over some disappointments and 

 failures. 



We pass now to the gathering and preservation of fruit. 

 Summer apples, peaches, and plums should ripen fully on 

 the trees. They may ripen and improve after they are 

 gathered, but will not gain as they would upon the trees. 

 Pears improve by house-ripening, and sometimes when blown 

 off half-grown may be ripened up to a degree of color and 

 flavor they would never have attained on the trees. 



Winter apples and pears should hang as late as the risk of 

 frosts and storms will allow. For this latitude it is not safe 

 to trust them later than the 10th of October, though usually 

 they will not take any harm before November. A slight 

 freezing does not hurt them, provided they are left undisturbed 

 while frozen. Yet that degree of frost which leaves no 

 apparent effects on the fruit, still in some degree changes its 

 nature, so as to make it not less palatable but less wholesome, 

 less agreeing with some persons. From the perfect health- 

 fulness of sound fruit, there is every degree of injury arising 

 from eating frozen fruit, down to that misery which afflicts 

 the school-boy who has gorged himself on frozen-thawed 

 apples. A little caution will save us here from much incon- 



