142 transactions of the american institute. 



Ripe Peaches in Southern Illinois. 



Solon Robinson — The following- letter is from our old correspondent, Dr 

 N. C. Meeker, of Illinois. It shows that that State is ahead of us in fruit: 



"Cairo, July 29, 1802. 



"Many of your readers will be surprised to learn how extensively good 

 fruit is raised in southern Illinois. Ten miles above Cairo, the Illinois 

 Central railroad enters a hilly country, and thirty miles further north the 

 hills are from two hundred to five hundred feet high. Usually there is 

 enough level ground on top for common sized farms. The passenger sees 

 tasteful cottages standing on lofty eminences, or on the edge of jutting 

 crags. What at a distance seem rows of corn would, upon near approach, 

 prove to be rows of fruit trees. At the stations, boys offer for sale pears 

 and beautiful peaches. And yet no part of Arkansas contains a population 

 more deeply in sympathy with the rebels in their attempt to destroy this 

 government, and to make slavery perpetual, than are a majority of the 

 people in some of these counties. As an evidence of this fact, I repeat a 

 statement made by Mr. Osborn, the president of the road, which is that, 

 having occasion to travel a distance of fifty or sixty miles at some distance 

 from the track, he nowhere could get a meal of victuals fit to eat. 



"But it is not a disloyal man living in that Gothic cottage almost over 

 your head. He was born in New England or New York, and to the educa- 

 tion he received at home he has added a Western polish. He has guns in 

 his house. At South Pass, Union county, forty miles from Cairo, live some 

 twenty of these Republican fruit growers, each having from twenty to 

 eighty acres of peaches, pears and apples. They understand their 

 business well, and they are distinguished by the Yankee characteristics of 

 industry, shrewdness and intelligence. The natives know they are not 

 cowards, and they know what cowardice is. They have a horticultural 

 society well supported. Parker Earle, from Vermont, is its secretary. 



" Within a distance of a few miles around this place I estimate that there 

 are from 100 to 800 acres of peach trees. This fruit is ripening now. Two 

 or three car loads of the nicest peaches you ever saw leave every evening 

 by special train for Chicago. The receipts of the owners of these orchards 

 range from $10 to $300 a day each. The season will last from fifteen to 

 thirty days. Some have contracted for their entire crop at two dollars a 

 bushel, delivered at tlie station. The prices would be tliirty per cent, 

 higher if change were plenty. They cannot supply the whole demand. 

 Those parts of the State where the richest men live, and where the most 

 wealth is found, that is, around the towns of Bloomington, Urbanna, and 

 thence westward to the Mississippi, probably will get few peaches. Some- 

 body must raise for them hereafter, as well as for the future additions to 

 our population. I know of one nursery where fifteen bushels of peach 

 stones w^ere planted last spring, and now there are thirty thousand young 

 trees which will be budded this autumn. 



" The natives are astonished, and they are going to raise fruit. For the 

 most part, they will do nothing. They do not know enough to raise fruit; 

 and men smarter than they can fail. One may think he knows how, but 

 that will not help the matter. The greatest obstacle which prevents many 



