46 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
very minor appendage to the general farming. For a 
generation or two of trees the insect pests were not 
common. There were no good markets, and the fruit 
sold as low-as twenty-five cents a bushel from the 
wagon-box. In fact, it was grown more for the 
home supply than with an idea of shipping it to 
market. Under such conditions, it did not matter if 
half the crop was wormy, or if many trees failed and 
died each year. Such facts often passed almost un- 
noticed. The trees bore well, to be sure, but the 
crop was not measured up in baskets and accounted 
for in dollars and cents, and under such conditions 
only the most productive trees left their impress upon 
the memory. The soils had not undergone such a 
long system of robbery then as now. When the old 
orchards wore out, there was no particular incentive 
to plant more, for there was little money in them. 
Often the young and energetic men had gone west, 
there to repeat the history, perhaps, and the old 
people did not care to set orchards. And upon this 
contracting area, all the borers and other pests which 
had been bred in the many old orchards now concen- 
trated their energies, until they have left scarcely 
enough trees in some localities upon which to perpet- 
uate their kind. A new country or a new industry is 
generally free of serious attacks of those insects 
which follow the crop in older communities. But the 
foes come in unnoticed and for a time spread unmo- 
lested, when finally, perhaps almost suddenly, their 
number becomes so great that they threaten destruec- 
tion, and the farmer looks on in amazement. 
