FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING 



of their kind." Several of these will be recognized as 

 well known varieties of the present day. 



There was also a specimen of an apple by Thomas 

 M. Clark, "evidently a pounder." With this apple 

 there was a newly invented machine for picking apples 

 consisting of a hoop made of wire attached to a handle 

 with a sack suspended from the hoop resembling an eel 

 pot. "The committee think it a valuable instrument for 

 gathering choice fruit. Donated by the above men- 

 tioned Clark." 



There are now a few bearing apple orchards in the 

 county that are sixty to seventy-five years of age. Most 

 of these are grafted fruit, which shows that attention 

 was generally drawn to the value of the apple as food 

 only within about the last hundred years. 



Practically all of the best varieties of to-day, how- 

 ever, were grown more than sixty years ago. In the 

 Patent Office Report for 1859 (in which division the 

 first reports on agriculture were made by our govern- 

 ment), T. S. Gold reports twenty varieties of apples, 

 and among them nearly all of the leading varieties of 

 the present day. The same impression of decay and 

 decline in orchards seemed to have prevailed then as 

 to-day, for Mr. Gold reports: "Within the past twenty 

 years, orchards in this part of the State have declined 

 rapidly, many old trees dying or ceasing to bear good 

 fruit. Decay dates from the ice storm of the winter of 



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