Froceedings of the Farmers' Club. j335 



any formers for a hundred years, have reduced the labor of the onion 

 field to a nicety. They say that with the common old style tools it 

 took eighty days' work per acre to put in, cultivate and harvest a 

 crop. With the best modern tools it can be done with the work of 

 fifty days. Thus, for onions alone, a good outfit of implements would 

 be worth thirty dollars a year on each acre cultivated. But there is 

 no tool known that supersedes the thumb and forefinger. One 

 advantage in such crops is that boys and girls that cannot do half a 

 day's work at common farm labor can equal or surpass an athletic 

 man at onion weeding. When that kind of labor is abundant, such 

 crops pay. The best cultivators go over their beds just as many 

 times as their condition require, but in most seasons twice is enough. 



Southern Stkawbekeies. 



A gentleman of Fountain Creek, Tenn., forwarded specimens of 

 strawberries grown in that vicinity. They were of the Wilson's 

 Albany variety, and as large as the average of good sized berries sell- 

 ing at thirty and thirty-five cents a quart. He said he emigrated 

 there in 186T, and was told the climate was too hot for strawberries ; 

 but he had found it quite the reverse. He also gave some account of 

 his vineyard of Concord vines three years old. This spring they are 

 heavy with bloom. 



Apropos of this subject, Mr. A. S. Fuller wished to inquire why it 

 is that no large sized berries ever find their way from the sunny south 

 to the New York markets. Are we to infer that the berries grown 

 there are all of an inferior quality and diminutive size ? 



Mr. T. C. Peters. — I was in Macon early in April, and I never 

 saw finer strawberries that tempted the palate there. I suspect the 

 Southern people have the good taste to eat the best themselves and 

 let the Yankees have what is left. In Connecticut it is difi'erent. 

 There it is the custom to sell everything they can sell and cat every- 

 thing they can't sell. 



Dr. Hallock. — If Mr. Fuller will walk with me up Third avenue 

 after this meeting, I will show him in the grocery stores that abound 

 in that thoroughfare, as fair specimens of this delicious fruit as he 

 ever laid eyes on, and. from south of the Mason and Dixon line too. 1 

 speak with authority, because before coming here I lunched on a 

 quart of them. 



Mr. H. P. Williajns. — My duties take me into the markets consid- 

 erably, and I am obliged to confess that the poorest strawberries I 



