Eight Dollars an Acre. 335 



fortunes out of this single article. Then comes the strawberry, for which 

 there is the same ever-recurring public impatience. I have seen patches 

 of this fruit, from which the runners have been carefully cut, and the plants 

 covered with coarse manure in winter, from which a clear profit, over picking 

 and marketing, of five hundred dollars per acre, has been realized. I know 

 that there are hundreds who do not clear a fifth of this per acre ; but the 

 difference does not lie either in the soil, the berry, or the market, but 

 exclusively in the man. It is not muscle that produces the strawberry-crop 

 which carries of the top price in market, but brains. Yet so wonderfully 

 hardy is this plant, and so generously does it bear even under the unkind- 

 est treatment, that the veriest sluggard has been known to greatly exceed 

 the Vermont standard of eight dollars per acre. Thus one acre of straw- 

 berries can be made to produce as much as two of asparagus. 



These continue in bearing until the raspberries are ready to be picked. 

 Now, two acres of raspberries will require no more labor to keep them in 

 condition than one of strawberries ; yet it is an ever}'-year result to take 

 three to four hundred dollars' worth of fruit from a single acre. The rea- 

 sons for this are conclusive. The plants do not blossom until after the 

 very latest frost has fallen : hence the crop is never blasted. The raspberry 

 is a universal favorite ; and the supply is never up to the demand, as its 

 cultivation has been strangely neglected : hence it commands high prices. 

 The improved varieties are enormous bearers, making the aggregate receipts 

 from an acre so large as to be almost incredible. Even from the common 

 purple-cane variety, I have known sixteen hundred dollars' worth to be 

 gathered and sold from a field of three acres. From all the facts occurring 

 around me, it would seem impossible to suggest a more advantageous 

 investment than that of raspberry-culture. 



This fruit has hardly disappeared from market when the blackberry 

 comes in to gratify with a new sensation the still-unsated appetite of the 

 millions who reside in cities. Many varieties of this fruit are competing 

 for public preference. The Dorchester and Lawton are most generally 

 known, and have been longest tested. I presume no one will dispute the 

 earliness and lusciousness of the Dorchester, nor the vast productiveness 

 of the Lawton. Last year, one of my neighbors sold eight hundred dollars' 

 worth of the Dorchester from the first week's picking upon two and a half 



