Progress of Horticulture in hidiana. 53 



that our nurseries have not been able to answer it — and they 

 are swept almost entirely clean. I may as well mention here 

 that, besides many mere neighborhood nurseries, there are 

 in this State eighteen which are large and skilfully 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 '43-44, apples of the finest sorts, (Jennetin, green 

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

 twenty-jive cents a bushel — and dull at that. This winter 

 they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is increasingly 

 turned to the cultivation of apples for exportation. Our in- 

 land orchards will soon find an outlet, both to the (3hio river 

 by rail-road, and the Lakes by canal. The effects of such a 

 deluge of fruit is worthy of some speculation. It will dimin- 

 ish the price but increase the jjrojit of fruit. An analagous 

 case is seen in the penny-postage system of England. Fruit 

 will become more generally and largely an article, not of 

 luxury, but of daily and ordinary diet. It will find its way 

 down to the poorest table — and the quantity consumed will 

 make up in profit to the dealer, what is lost in lessening 

 its price. A few years and the apple crop will be a matter 

 of reckoning by farmers and speculators, just as is now, the 

 potato crop — the wheat crop — the pork, &c. Nor will it cre- 

 ate a home market alone. By care it may be exported with 

 such facility, that the world will receive it as a part of its 

 diet. It will, in this respect, follow the history of grains and 

 edible roots, and from a local and limited use, the apple and 

 the pear will become articles of universal demand. The 

 reasons of such an opinion are few and simple. It is a fruit 

 always palatable — and as such, will be welcome to mankind 

 whatever their tastes, if it can be brought within their reach. 

 The Western States will, before many years, deforested with 

 orchards. The fruit bears exportation kindly. Thus there 

 will be a siipply ; a possibility of distributing it by com- 

 merce, — to meet a taste already existing. These views may 



