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BULLETIN OF 

 MASSACHUSETTS BOAED OF AGEICULTURE. 



Report of the Meetings of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers' 



Association. 



By Prof. S. T. Matnaed, Secretary. 



For a great many years the amount of fruit consumed by the 

 people of this State has been steadily increasing, but this increase 

 has come not from our own growers but largely from other States 

 and countries. Of the amount of fruit imported into Massachu- 

 setts from other States or countries we have no accurate statistics 

 available at this time, but we learn that the city of Boston alone 

 consumed in a single season nearly 2,000,000 cans of apple, and in 

 the city of Worcester a single dealer handled two carloads of the 

 same product ; and almost every town or city in the State con- 

 sumes more or less of apples in this convenient form, none of 

 which are produced by our own fruit growers. 



In every city, town or village, evaporated apples, dried plums, 

 peaches and berries are consumed in more or less large quantities ; 

 and canned peaches, cherries, raspberries and strawberries are 

 found on the shelves of almost every grocer and provision dealer 

 in the State. During the summer and fall our markets are flooded 

 with fresh fruits from other States : strawberries from Florida, 

 Georgia, Virginia and New Jersey ; peaches from most of the 

 Southern States ; grapes from the South and West and almost 

 every kind of fruit from the Pacific coast. 



No State in the Union, probably, consumes so much fruit per 

 capita as our own ; and our fruit growers should make a great effort 

 to secure at least a reasonable share of this immense traffic, and sup- 

 ply more fuMy than is now done our local markets. In many cases 

 the competition will be between our native and the tropical fruits ; 

 but there is no section of the country that can produce better 



