FRUIT CULTURE IN AMERICA 307 



for cattle ranches and mining operations, yet it has developed into the most 

 interesting fruit-growing region in North America, if not in the world. The 

 diversity of its climate and soil is such that almost every kind of fruit can be 

 grown somewhere within the limits of the State, from the apple which 

 flourishes in the mountain sections, to the mango and other tropical fruits that 

 succeed in the sheltered valleys along the southern coast. 



THE APPLE 



Of all the fruits in America there is none that equals the apple in excellence, 

 popularity, and profit. It was first brought here by the English pioneers who 

 settled on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and at Jamestown, Virginia, and a 

 little later, by the Pilgrim Fathers, who founded Plymouth and other colonies 

 on the New England coast. It is perhaps grown here with greater success than 

 anywhere else in the world, for it attains its highest excellence with us accord- 

 ing to the verdict of the jurors at the World's Exposition, where products of 

 orchards from all countries have been shown. Only a few of the Old- World 

 varieties are considered of much value ; not that they do not flourish here, but 

 having taken them as a basis, seedlings have been grown which in many 

 cases surpass them in size, colour, and flavour. Each year adds new varieties 

 to the list, and most of them are chance seedlings that have come up in fence 

 corners and other out-of-the-way places, in old seedling orchards, or in nursery 

 rows. The choicest and most popular sorts grown in our orchards to-day have 

 originated in this way. There are now nearly five thousand named varieties of 

 the apple mentioned in books on Pomology, including those introduced from 

 abroad, but only about two hundred are commonly grown in our orchards. 

 They range in season from early summer to the next May. The popular 

 commercial list comprises less than fifty varieties. 



Apple Orchards.— Almost every farm in North America has an apple 

 orchard of sufficient size to supply the home, except in some parts of Canada, a 

 few of the most northern States of the Republic, and in the extreme south, 

 where it is too warm. Many of these small orchards furnish a surplus for sale, 

 and sometimes the few acres of apple trees yield more clear money than the crops 

 on all the rest of the farm. From the early settlement of the country to about 

 fifty years ago, apples were cultivated in America mainly for cider making, 

 because that was the prevailing use for this fruit in Europe, whence our fore- 

 fathers came. But cider is now rarely made even by those who have plenty of 

 apples. We have developed into a race of fruit eaters. Commercial apple 

 orcharding has attained gigantic proportions. It began fully one hundred years 

 ago, stimulated by the trade with England, which sprang up about that time, 

 through the sale of a variety called Newtown, or more lately, Albemarle Pippin. 

 One orchard of 20,000 trees of this variety was planted early in the last 

 century in the Hudson River Valley, in New York, from which apples were 

 sold in London as high as ^4 per barrel, wholesale, for a short time. This 

 orchard finally fell into decay, and it was not until after our Civil War, or about 

 1865, that apple-planting again began to develop vigorously in a practical way. 



