Fridt Evaporation in America. 
487 
inquire into the present development of the fruit-drying in- 
dustry in the United States. The following brief notes sum up 
the information which I was able, in the short time at my dis- 
posal, to obtain upon the subject. 
The town of Rochester, in the State of New York, is the 
recognised centre of the industry in question, which has 
already assumed immense proportions. The rapid growth of 
fruit-drying in this region throws incidental light upon a some- 
what obscure question, viz., "Why is the British farmer so 
slow, and his transatlantic cousin and competitor so quick, in 
adapting himself to altered conditions of cultivation ? " 
Illustrations of the fact are not far to seek. The entry of 
the Great West, in the character of a wheat-grower, upon the 
agricultural stage of the world ci'eated a " depression " in the 
agriculture of the Eastern States of America no less marked than 
that which followed from the same cause in England. New 
England, no more than Old England, could, after that entry, 
any longer aflford to raise the traditionally " important crops." 
A change of front became inevitable there, as here, and was 
made with a rapidity which England might envy, but has not 
approached. 
Thanks to the mine of statistical wealth embodied in the 
quinquennial Census of Massachusetts, it is possible to measure 
the depth of the depression in question in one of the most 
densely populated States of the Union. More than half the 
towns in the leading agricultural county of Berkshire, Mass., 
lost fourteen per cent, of their inhabitants between 1865 and 
1875, while in Middlesex, the second farming county in the State, 
one town in every five parted with three-fourths of its people 
during the same pei'iod. 
Yet the agriculture of Massachusetts has not declined. The 
farmer has, indeed, given up raising the " important crops," but 
their place has been more than filled by an increase in the pro- 
duction of milk, eggs, vegetables and fruit. Twelve times as 
many eggs and forty times as much milk are now produced in 
this State, than was the case thirty years ago ; while the increase 
in such crops as beets, carrots, beans, cranberries, and onions 
is almost equally great. The total value of the farm-produce of 
Massachusetts increased by nearly twenty per cent, within the 
ten years ending 1880, notwithstanding the fact that many 
farms, once the homes of prosperous men, are going begging for 
customers at a tenth of their original cost, while the popula,tion 
of all the agricultural towns is slowly dwindling. 
If Massachusetts has survived an " agi-icultural depression," 
it is because the Yankee is a totally different person from the 
