No. 4.] FRUIT CULTURE. 133 



In contrast to this, and as an object lesson of great in- 

 terest, illustrating more forcibly than words can describe 

 the advantages resulting from thorough cultivation and 

 persistent spraying, I want to take you to tlie orchards of 

 W. H. Hart, about three miles east of Poughkeepsie, and in 

 your mind's eye see what I saw on the fifth day of last Sep- 

 tember, when I took Geo. T. Powell and Professors Clinton 

 and Duggar of Cornell University out there to visit the 

 orchards. 



These orchards cover eighty acres, mostly upon a sidehill 

 facing the west. The land is broken by ledges of rock and 

 rises by plateaus as it extends eastward, not valuable for 

 general agriculture, but made valuable for fruit growing by 

 the treatment it has received. Much of the older portion 

 of the orchard was set to Greenings, Baldwins and other 

 varieties grown thirty to forty years ago. These trees were 

 heavily loaded. But go with me farther on, to the orchard 

 set twenty-five years since with Northern Spy, Baldwin and 

 Ben Davis, the trees bending and some breaking under their 

 loads of from five to eight barrels to the tree. Standing at 

 a central point, on a visit made when the fruit was ready to 

 pick, October 1, and looking adown these rows of trees ex- 

 tending on either hand till the fruit was lost to view, the 

 sight was grand. The dark red of the Baldwin, which hung 

 literally like ropes of onions ; the brighter blush and stripes 

 of the Spy, magnificent in size, many weighing twelve 

 ounces each and measuring twelve inches in circumference ; 

 the hundreds of trees of Ben Davis, fairly ablaze with its 

 briiiht red fruit, some of these trees set in 1889 bearing 

 two barrels of apples, — were objects of extreme beauty. 

 Consider that, standing at this place, the eye took in at a 

 glance at least one thousand barrels of this highly colored 

 and truly magnificent fruit, and that the entire crop of this 

 orchard was not less than five thousand barrels, and we are 

 ready to exclaim " The apple indeed is king." 



You may well ask what produced this magnificent crop. 

 It is the outcome of years of trial and of work. The results 

 are for us to profit by. The soil, naturally thin, had been 

 fed in former years with stable manure, but latterly with 

 potash and phosphoric acid, and crops of crimson clover 



