No. 4.] FRUITS FOR LOCAL MARKETS. 79 



And just a word about the grape. There is an acre of 

 grapes on the college grounds at Amherst that has a very 

 rare location in regard to slope and elevation. Professor 

 Maynard told me, he having known it for twenty-five or 

 thirty years, that it has not failed to produce a profit, and it 

 has averaged about 3 tons to the acre, and the selling price 

 has averaged 5 cents a pound ; and he said the cost of caring 

 for it has certainly been less than the cost of raising and car- 

 ing for an acre of potatoes. 



Would Mr. Hale, in attempting to raise gooseberries, try 

 the English or the American type? 



Mr. Hale. The best American type, — the mildew is so 

 serious a featm-e of the English. I presume there are mod- 

 ern methods of growing the gooseberry. Some of our best 

 American types are good enough, and are sure bearers and 

 more profitable on the whole, although they are not profita- 

 ble unless you have enough people who appreciate them to 

 create a market. 



Question. Can you take care of the cantaloupe with the 

 spraying machine ? 



Mr. Hale. The blight has been very severe in the last 

 five years. Some of our scientific friends are finding they 

 know less about it than they thought. I mean the more we 

 study, the less we appear to know. The fellow who sprayed 

 has held it quite considerably in check. A scientific man, a 

 chemist, who loves the soil and loves the thino-s that ijrow 

 out of it, — he only has two or three high-priced chemist 

 jobs a year, and manages to live on them the rest of the 

 year, — thinks he has a plant food mixture which will make 

 the plants resistant to the blight; and two years ago, on 

 Long Island, on the south shore, where the fogs and the 

 conditions are very variable, Avhere he treated his vines with 

 this particular plant food, he succeeded in growing superb 

 melons where others failed. I only grow them for family 

 supply, three or four fields of difterent varieties, but he 

 begged the privilege of treating them this past summer. 

 Those that we didn't si)ray went down first entirely by 

 blight, and the ones we did spray were absolutely free from 

 it until they got about two-thirds through the season, when 



