414 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



Continental or American origin. A few years ago to each 

 one hundred apple-trees, our nurseries sold, perhaps, two 

 pear-trees ; now they sell at least twenty to a hundred. 

 Very large pear orchards are established, and in some in- 

 stances are now beginning to bear. I purchased Williams's 

 Bon Chretien in our market last fall for seventy-five cents 

 the bushel. This pear, with the St. Michael's, Beurre Diel, 

 Beurre d'Aremberg, Passe Colmar, Duchesse d'Angouleme, 

 Seckel, and Marie Louise, are the most widely diffused, and 

 all of them regularly at our exhibitions. Every year ena- 

 bles us to test other varieties. The Passe Colmar and 

 Beurre d'Aremberg have done exceedingly well — a branch 

 of the latter, about eighteen inches in length, was exhib- 

 ited at our Fair, bearing over twenty pears, none of which 

 were smaller than a turkey's Q^^. The demand for pear- 

 trees, this year, has been such that our nurseries have not 

 been able to answer it — and they are swept almost entirely 

 clean. I may as well mention here that, beside many more 

 neighborhood nurseries, there are in this State eighteen 

 which are large and skillfully conducted. 



The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their general 

 cultivation. Apple-trees, not under ten feet high, and finely 

 grown, sell »at ten^ and pears at twenty cents ; and in some 

 nurseries, apples may be had at six cents. This price, it 

 should be recollected, is in a community where corn brings 

 from twelve to twenty cents only, a bushel ; wheat sells 

 from forty-five to fifty ; hay at five dollars the ton. During 

 the season of 1843-'44, apples of the finest sorts (Jennetting, 

 green Newtown pippin, etc.), sold at my door, as late as 

 April, for twenty-five cents a bushel — and dull at that. This 

 winter they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is in- 

 creasingly turned to the cultivation of apples for exporta- 

 tion. Our inland orchards will soon find an outlet, both to 

 the Ohio River by railroad, and the Lakes by canal. The 

 effects of such a deluge of fruit is worthy of some specula- 

 tion. It will diminish the price but increase the profit of 



