STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 33 



paper with the above heading, it will be necessaiy to use tlie pro- 

 noun I so often that it may seem egotistical, still I trust that I ma^- 

 be as ready to state my failures as successes, and commencing as 

 I did when a mere child, with no more knowledge of fruit raising 

 than the average bo^' of fift^- years ago who had tastes for this vo- 

 cation, I must have made man}' failures. I alwajs loved to labor in 

 the orchard, to watch the opening buds and growing fruit. 



My experience commenced with raising pears, or rather pear trees. 

 A neighbor of mine having an old native pear tree, I procured some 

 seeds and raised some twenty-five pear trees. When these trees 

 were old enough to transplant to the orchard, m}- boyish ideas not 

 being large, I thought I had an immense number, and having no 

 thought of making money, I gave away to my Aoung associates all 

 but about half a dozen, thinking that I had kept all that I should 

 ever want. Of the trees that I kept three are now bearing bounti- 

 ful crops of Clapp's Favorite, while the remainder have long since 

 gone to the brush pile. Of those given awa^' a few are now large, 

 thrifty trees, but the larger part, although nearly half a century of 

 age, have not yet come to bearing — the larger part being dead 

 and the remainder exemplifying the old adage '' He who plants 

 pears, plants for his heirs." 



Since arriving at manhood, my mind has changed and I have pur- 

 chased manA' pear trees, and I believe that with proper care there is 

 no more reliable or profitable crop raised. The great difficulty in 

 raising pear trees in this State is that we do not realize that they 

 will not stand neglect and still produce crops, like an apple tree. 

 We must ever bear in mind that to raise pears successfully we must 

 treat them bountiful!}' with the best fertilizers. 



To illustrate my point I will say that one of the trees from my 

 boyhood nursery had been grafted to Buffum pears, and, although it 

 had been large enough for many years to bear bushels of fruit yearly, 

 still I onl}' occtisionalh' found a specimen. I finally decided to *'kill 

 or cure" and Ijoxed up the trunk of the tree almost two feet in 

 height and made a yard some fifteen feet in diameter enclosing the 

 tree. Into this yard I put a litter of Poland Chinas and kept them 

 there some two months, and the result was that the next year I had 

 to prop up my tree to save it. This was eight years since, but 

 the tree continues to bear gocnl croi)s annually. 



Profiting by this experience, and having a small pear orchard near 

 my house, I made a pig ^-ard of it and last season, while almost 

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