46 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



liood, — orchards Avbich were once large, thrifty and highl}^ 

 productive, but -which are now partially dead, and whose 

 remnants are rapidly going to decay ; orchards, from whose 

 limited history in age, location and manner of treatment we 

 may gather a few hints to guide us in our search after truth. 

 But these are not isolated cases ; there are hundreds, and per- 

 haps thousands of old and dying-out orchards, to-day, all over 

 our State, some of them so far gone that of many of the trees 

 it may be said, as we would say of an old and decayed tooth, 

 "it had better be pulled out root and branch and a new one 

 sul^stitutcd, for that is the only way in which that tooth can 

 be renovated." 



I remember well some of the grand old orchards of my 

 childhood's days ; there was something enchanting and . en- 

 ticing about them, and to my mind there are no trees now 

 that grow so tall, that lift their heads so majestically, or that 

 wave so gracefully in the autumn breezes, and that are loaded 

 so richly and heavily with golden, yellow and crimson fruit. 

 The trees then were in some measure, at least, as nature 

 designed and formed them, and the fruit as God made it, and 

 I have often thought that no apples since have tasted half so 

 sweet and good. It may be because, having no orchard of 

 our own, that they were sometimes surreptitiously obtained, 

 as Eve obtained hers. That was more than thirty-five years 

 ago, and what changes have been effected since by heat and 

 cold, by sunshine and storm, by depredations of insects and 

 by the hand of man. It is truly astonishing, these wonderful 

 changes ; often we cannot understand or realize them. 



Within a radius of five or six miles, there existed in those 

 days six or seven large orchards, renowned throughout the 

 State for their good fruit and great productiveness. The most 

 famous of these were Dr. Vaughan's and that of Mr. Haskell. 

 The others embraced the orchards of Major Haines, Mr. Frank 

 Wingate, Mr. Joseph Wingate, and that of Dr. Weld, original 

 owner Mr. Carr, I think. I have been informed, from re- 

 liable authority, that none of these orchards date their exist- 

 ence farther back than 1800. They were all set out about the 



