62 The Connecticut Pomological Society 



The electric railway has arrived upon the scene, and brings 

 the truck farmer into closer communion with the green -grocer. 

 With the telephone upon which to take orders, and the swift - 

 moving carriage to take the products to market, we have two 

 great factors in the horticulture of the future. The wonderful 

 development of refrigerator cars is working marked changes in 

 the business of horticulture. Speaking after the manner of 

 men, we sometimes feel like "registering a kick" over the 

 progress of the daj'. When the refrigerator car puts upon 

 the Grand Rapids market the finest Georgia peaches at just 

 the time when our local early fruits are ready to be sold, and 

 this southern fruit is in perfect condition to be used, it seems 

 as if the bottom was knocked out of the peach business in 

 our locality. But we "get our second wind" and learn as 

 quickly as possible that our early fruits are not hardly fit to 

 eat anyway, and it is just as well not to have them in market; 

 and so we change our methods and grow the later kinds that 

 do not come in competition with our neighbors' fruit. The 

 result is all in the interests of the consumer, for he gets a 

 better quality of fruit throughout the season. 



In my boyhood days 1 used to make a nice lot of money 

 out of the garden by selling watermelons. In these later j^ears 

 the Alabama and Georgia, Arkansas and Missouri melons are 

 placed upon our market in perfect condition long before we 

 have any for sale, and when our crop of ordinary melons is 

 ready for sale, nobody wants to buy them. How do we suit 

 ourselves to the conditions? For we must do this. Why, we 

 simply grow a quality of melons that cannot be shipped. We 

 use our soil to grow the Dark and Light Icings, and melons 

 of that quality which hardly bear transportation in any other 

 way than on spring wagons, and so we hold our own. 



Economic storage comes in as a wonderful help to the 

 horticulturist and to the tiller of the soil. To-day, a few 

 men in our town are putting upon the market the finest 

 quality of Greenings, Jonathans, Northern Spies, in the face 

 of the fact that our fruit decayed very rapidly last autumn 

 and it was with the greatest difficulty under ordinary methods 

 that we could have any for winter use. These men are en- 

 abled to do this because they have taken advantage of the 



