80 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Your Committee found, among the others exhibited, a most 

 excellent apple, very large and handsome, crisp and juicy, 

 with a very fine flavor ; it was entirely unknown among the 

 fruit-growers present, who, with the Committee, tested its 

 eating qualities. The name given to it by the exhibitor being 

 considered incorrect, your Committee unanimously decided to 

 name it for one so long identified with and loved by our 

 Society ; we therefore gave it the name of the Sutton apple, 

 and as such it will be extensively cultivated for its worth. 



The exhibit of apples by our Society, in size and good 

 looks, was worthy a place second to none we saw at the Cen- 

 tennial Exhibition, though the average size of some may have 

 been larger from the States in the prolific West ; yet, in 

 beauty and keeping qualities, our apples beat them. Canada 

 made a fine show of apples, and in plums she excelled all 

 competitors, showing that ice may hope yet to regain here this 

 delicious fruit, ripening between the cherry and the apple, 

 which has been so profitable in this county in the past, 

 and which our Society should otfer special inducements to 

 promote the cultivation of, that eventually a remedy for the 

 curculio and black knot can be found. 



A variety of opinion prevails in regard to the expediency 

 and benefit of root-pruning. We have found in ploughing 

 an old orchard, breaking off roots of various sizes, that the 

 trees since have started with fresh vigor in growth, producing 

 much larger apples, with less tendency to drop than before. 



We have also found an excellent preventive from the rav- 

 ages of ground mice on young trees, to be a couple of shovel- 

 fuls of fresh cow manure put around the butt of the tree late 

 iu the season. 



We were in hopes to draw out from the experience of so 

 many different fruit-growers individual experiments and 

 results, which would in the aggregate furnish information to 

 our Society of the most valuable kind ; but the exhibitors 

 were not so interested in furnishing it as your Committee in 

 seeking it, although we believe it one of the requirements of 

 the Society. However, enough valuable information has been 

 furnished to interest and instruct others, and we trust that 

 hereafter exhibitors, especially those receiving awards, will 

 feel it a pleasant duty to forward to the chairman of the 



