250 Notes and Gleanings. 



better price. Here, then, is striking evidence that special fruit-growers are 

 notoriously successful, not notoriously disappointed. 



The columns of every agricultural journal furnish numerous well- authenti- 

 cated statements of high profits yielded exclusively from special fruit- culture. 

 Careful cultivators of strawberries, who keep off the runners, are producing from 

 two to four thousand quarts of splendid fruit per acre. I have seen fields thus 

 cultivated which have produced a clear profit of five hundred dollars per acre. I 

 have known three thousand dollars, clear of all cost of picking and marketing, 

 to be realized from twenty-five acres, even when cultivated on the broadcast 

 system, with no runners removed. All the other berries are made equally re- 

 munerative ; and the testimony is uniformly in one direction, — that where the 

 attention has been concentrated on one or two special fruits, there the highest 

 return has been secured. If this employment were not remunerative, the nur- 

 series would speedily die out, as neither plants nor trees would be wanted. But 

 the establishment of new ones and the enlargement of others prove that our 

 people do not believe that " their labors and aims must be diversified." Tliey 

 have satisfied themselves that specialties are eminently profitable, and specialties 

 they intend to prosecute. 



No American writer should discourage the cultivation of the luscious fruits 

 which Providence has created for our health and gratification ; least of all by 

 sweeping statements of its being a losing business. There are thousands of 

 deserving families with moderate means, who, by such employment, could support 

 themselves more easily, and with more uniform certainty, than by any other. 

 They should be cheered on to thus use their little means, rather than discour- 

 aged. Such writers, however, niay truthfully assert that all are not successful, 

 as various cases of disappointment have come within my observation. In no 

 human enterprise is success universal. If some fail at fruit-growing, so do 

 others at ordinary farming. Equally unfortunate are another class when apply- 

 ing themselves to ordinary traffic. But, granted that fruit-culture is a paying 

 employment, it must be the man, and not the business, at whose door the failure 

 should be laid. The demand for fruit enlarges annually, and prices of all varie- 

 ties continue to rise. Thirty years ago, it was difficult to sell even moderate 

 quantities of strawberries at over sixpence a quart ; but how stands the market 

 now, in the face of a production whose increased magnitude cannot be even 

 estimated 1 It is an accepted maxim of trade, that men lose by buying in a 

 falling market ; but that, to be successful, they must purchase in a rising one. 

 Such, unquestionably, is the fruit-market of this country ; and into the supplying 

 of it there is absolute safety in embarking. The occasional gluts of former 

 years have ceased. New buyers, in tlie shape of great canning establishments, 

 now stand ready to clear the most over-crowded market when prices rule low. 

 The single condition for securing an ample profit is that we shall produce a first- 

 class article, whether it be pear or blackberry. Zoilus. 



