40 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



other fruit. It is certainly one of the most valuable, for it can be preserved 

 with care for months, tendi;ig to promote health, and greatly adding to our 

 enjoyment. Grape culture is rapidly extending throughout the country, and • 

 the time is not far distant when all the wines that we need will be produced 

 in our own country, and when grapes will be within the reach of all. 



How cheaply they can be produced in this State and pay the producer, is a 

 question yet undetermined, but it is in a fair way of being solved. Thus far? 

 sheltered side hills with a southern exposure have been selected, and such a 

 location without doubt is the best that can be found, provided it can be suit- 

 ably prepared. It is said that any soil that will produce good corn will be 

 suitable for grapes ; however that may be, we find by experience that they 

 prefer a warm and somewhat dry soil, rather than a cold and wet one. There 

 is yet a great difference of opinion as to how the ground should be prepared 

 to set a vineyard. In setting some five hundred vines in one lot we have 

 inade no other preparation than we should for corn, simply ploughing the land 

 deeply, and manuring well with well-decomposed manure. That it will in the 

 end be a good investment to trench the land well and put in drains, if the land 

 is inclined to be too wet, we have no doubt. No one should plant a vineyard 

 with the expectation that grapes can be produced as easily as they have been 

 the past year, but that seasons will come when they will have mildew, rot, 

 injurious insects in abundance, and many other things to contend with. The 

 robin is a great pest to the grape grower, often destroying a large part 

 of the crop. It is astonishing to see how they will congregate in and about a 

 vineyard, all bent upon the destruction of the fruit. This will prove a serious 

 drawback to the successful cultivation of the grape, unless the law protecting 

 that bird is repealed, and the birds are killed off. Great improvement has 

 been made in the varieties of grapes within a few years past, but there is still 

 room for more. Some fortunate individual is yet to give us a grape much 

 earlier, larger, of better quality, more hardy than any we now have. 



The crop of Apples in this vicinity was small the past season, and there 

 were but few exhibitors. Prominent among these were F. Clapp, A. Clement, 

 James Eustis, A. D. Williams and J. W. Foster, who have been able to show 

 some good fruit notwithstanding canker worms, caterpillars, and other enemies 

 of this indispensable fruit. So short was the crop, that in one instance, on a 

 farm that has often yielded from eight hundred to a thousand barrels of this 

 fruit, the owners were obliged to buy apples for the use of their own families. 

 It is now considered more difficult to raise good apples, around Boston, than 

 to raise pears. In fact, so difficult has it become, owing to the causes that 

 have been enumerated above, and to the low price of apples in years of plen- 

 ty, that some of the farmers are digging up their orchards, believing that the 

 land will yield a better income from strawberries, or even field crops, than 

 from the trees. It is very doubtful if this crop can be made a profitable one 

 when the land is suitable for small fruits and vegetables, and is near a good 



