11 



a wish; that what the public convenience and neces- 

 sity demand, you would be the last to oppose or destroy. 



If then, this competition must continue, it must be 

 met and sustained on our part by superior skill and ap- 

 plication, by more intelligent management, by resorting 

 to new articles of production, or restricting ourselves to 

 those which are less likely to be affected by such com- 

 petition. Our large market towns will aUvays require 

 large and early supplies of vegetables, and for these, 

 fair remunerating prices will continue to be obtained. 

 It is certain that far greater profits are derived from 

 market gardens, than from any large farm, on which the 

 same expenditures are made. But to these there is a 

 limit. 



There is another source of profit opened to us, the 

 value of which we have not yet begun to appreciate or 

 realize. I mean our orchards; not orchards as they now 

 are, but as they may be made to be — large and thrifty 

 orchards of valuable summer and winter fruit. Time 

 was, when apples were cultivated principally for cider, 

 and this Society annually offered premiums for the best 

 sample of it. That time has gone by, but on most of 

 our farms, the trees still remain, yielding the same sour 

 fruit, which now hardly repays the labor of gathering. 

 When not too far gone, these trees should be furnished 

 with a new head, as manj- a farmer has been, who once 

 depended on their whole produce for his home con- 

 sumption of cider. New views and new habits, in this 

 particidar, have been engrafted on the minds of nearly 

 our entire agricultural community, and why should not 

 new fruit and better fruit be inserted into our old ap- 

 ple tree stocks? The apple tree is longer lived and 

 will continue in bearing a greater length of time than is 

 generally supposed. On a farm in this county, two ap- 

 ple trees lately existed — one of them yet remains — from 

 which forty dollars' worth of fruit was taken in one sea- 

 son, after they were one hundred years old. From the 

 same farm more than a thousand barrels of winter apples 

 have repeatedly been taken in a single year. This 

 however has been effected only by good care and culti- 



