AND ITS DISEASE. 35 



adapted to early trucking and fruit growing, for 

 the northern cities of New York and Philadelphia. 

 Here fruits and vegetables mature some three weeks 

 in advance of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, af- 

 fording the producer the advantage of an early 

 market and highly remunerative prices. I visited 

 that section of country in July, 1865, and found 

 the early peaches just ripening, and coming into 

 market. This was about the twentieth of the 

 month. These early shipments were then bringing 

 high prices in Philadelphia and New York, and I 

 was so pleased with the appearances that I con- 

 tracted for the purchase of a farm, near the rail- 

 road, with a view of going into general fruit rais- 

 ing. This was in Somerset county, Maryland,, 

 some fifteen miles below the terminus, at Salis- 

 bury. A short time after the road was extended 

 to Crisfield, on the bay. In the fall of 1865 and 

 the spring of 1866 I commenced planting, putting 

 in some 9,000 peach trees, and about twenty acres 

 in pears, strawberries and grape vines. This sec- 

 tion of Maryland was and is entirely exempt from 

 the yellows. The disease, in fact, is not there 

 known to peach growers. The extension of the 

 railroad through to the bay induced the extensive 

 planting of orchards, and the success attending my 

 experiment with strawberries at once established 

 that branch* of fruit culture as highly profitable, 

 and from less than one hundred quarts daily ship- 

 ped from the station at the time I purchased, the 



