AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
FOR THE 
ITarm, Garden, and. Household. 
“ AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AND MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.”-Waijiiin 0 to!i. , 
ORANGE JTIJD®, A.ML, 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
Office, 41 Park Row, (Times Buildings.) 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842. 
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( For Contents, Terms, etc., see page 388. 
• VOLUME XXI—No. 9. NEW"YORK, SEPTEMBER, 1862. NEW SERIES—No. 188. 
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1862, by 
Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of 
the United States for the Southern District of New-York. 
t3f~ Other Journals are invited to copy desirable articles 
freely, if each article be credited to American Agriculturist. 
US’-Sce the Last Page, this month. 
“ Wouldst thou thy vats with generous juice should froth? 
Respect thy orchards; think not that the trees 
Spontaneous will produce an wholesome draught. 
Let art correct thy breed; from parent bough 
A cion meetly sever ; after, force 
A way into the crab stock’s close-wrought graft 
By wedges, and within the living wound 
Enclose the foster twig ; nor, over-nice, 
Refuse with thy own hands around to spread 
The binding clay; ere long their differing veins 
Unite, and kindly nourishment convey 
To the new pupil; now he shoots his arms 
With quickest growth; now shake the teeming trunk, 
Down rain the impurpled balls, ambrosial fruit.” 
Phillips. 
With all that is said and sung of new fruits, 
and new varieties, there is danger, perhaps, that 
the attention will be diverted from that oldest 
and most widely distributed fruit, the. apple. 
While men are priding themselves upon their 
splendid pears and grapes, apples very natural¬ 
ly fall into the back ground. Pears take the 
lead in the discussions at the Pomological Soci¬ 
eties and make the biggest show at the horti¬ 
cultural and agricultural fairs. Tap a fruit 
grower on pears or strawberries and he will run 
freely; on apples he soon dries up. He will 
hold you by the hour on the wonderful per¬ 
formances of his new seedlings from the Bart¬ 
lett or the Diel, but has no enthusiasm for the 
apple. It is given over, in far too many instances, 
to farmers and unskillful cultivators. 
Yet the apple is the fruit for the million, and 
is a greater source of wealth to the nation than 
any other fruit we cultivate. It came over with 
the first settlers from England, and we very 
soon find traces of it in the early records of the 
colonies. It is not a very old fruit, even in the 
fatherland. Leonard Mascal has the fame of 
first introducing the cultivated apple into Eng¬ 
land, about the year 1525, less than a hundred 
years before the settlements of Jamestown and 
Plymouth. It was highly prized by the colo¬ 
nists, and it was the ambition of every settler 
who owned a plantation, to have his orchard, 
and his cider-press. The liquor seems to have 
been prized, both here and in England, more 
highly than the fruit. The orchard suggested 
hogsheads of cider fermeuting in the cellar, 
rather than barrels of choice winter fruit for 
family stores, or waiting a market. This view 
of the uses of the orchard impressed itself upon 
the whole population, and cider became a com¬ 
mon drink at the tables of rich and poor, until 
the dawn of the Temperance reformation some 
thirty years ago. The fact that apples were 
grown principally for the press, made cultivators 
careless of the varieties. An apple indifferent 
for eating made a fair liquor, and seedling were 
quite as likely to be planted as grafted trees. 
Indeed many of the old orchards of the second 
and third generations arc still largely made up 
of -seedlings. Notwithstanding the low aims 
of the cultivators, the apple flourished iu our 
new soil and climate, beyond all that the colo¬ 
nists had ever seen in the old country. Many 
of the trees raised from seed bore first-rate fruit, 
and we are indebted to chance seedlings for 
some of our best varieties. Indeed by far the 
larger part of the best apples upon our lists are 
of American origin. The Newtown Pippin is 
generally admitted to be the finest apple in the 
world. In eating qualities the Baldwin, the 
Spitzenberg, the Northern Spy, King, Swaar, 
and Cogswell are not much behind it. 
The high price of apples, running from two to 
five dollars a barrel for good winter fruit, is a 
clear indication that we have not orchards 
enough. We believe a consultation of the price 
list would show a pretty steady advance for the 
last thirty years, notwithstanding the thriving 
business doue by our nurseries and the immense 
number of orchards planted. For this there are 
a variety of causes. The extensive disuse of ci¬ 
der as a beverage has had some influence. Some 
though it wrong to grow a fruit so liable to be 
perverted. A few cut down their orchards as 
a nuisance. Many thought it useless to plant 
orchards when there was no longer to be a de¬ 
mand for cider. Apples were so plenty and 
cheap in many parts of the country that the 
only way to turn them into money was to make 
cider of them. Good winter fruit could he had 
iu any quantity for fifty cents a barrel, and at 
that price it would not pay for a long transpor¬ 
tation. It was like the plethora of corn upon 
the prairies away from railroads, where they use 
it for fuel. Few thought it an object to plant 
orchards for the fruit alone. Apples at three 
dollars a barrel iu a year of plenty was a thing 
undreamed of. Most of the old orchards plant¬ 
ed in the last century have ceased to be produc¬ 
tive, and many are entirely gone. 
And while the orchards have been decaying, 
our population has been rapidly increasing, and 
concentrating more and more in cities and vil¬ 
lages, where apples are not produced. The new 
lines of intercourse by rail and steamer between 
city and country have advanced the price of 
this fruit, and -of all other farm products. All 
classes are educated to the use of this fruit, and 
it is felt to be almost a necessity of living. The 
demand, though not as large, is as steady as-for 
corn or potatoes. Any favored region that pro¬ 
duces a surplus of apples, in a year of scarcity, 
is immediately drained of its treasures at high 
prices. • There are few years that do not see 
thousands of barrels sent from ceutral and west¬ 
ern New-York into New-England, and in years 
of scarcity apples from Ohio, Michigau, and 
farther west, find a good market in the east. 
The demand is also increased by new facili¬ 
ties for drying the fruit. This is done not only 
in the household by old methods, but by a ma¬ 
chine invented for the purpose. Immense quan¬ 
tities are used in this form by families; and for 
ship stores, in long sea voyages. It pays very 
well iu places remote from railroads when the 
fruit is plenty, to send it to market dried. 
Besides these influences working at home, 
there is an ever-increasing demand for Ameri¬ 
can apples abroad. The same varieties.are fair¬ 
er and finer flavored upon our side of the water, 
and several of our American apples have no 
rivals iu the European market. Newtown Pip¬ 
pins are sold in the London market sometimes 
as high as nine dollars a barrel. This demand 
is likely to increase in coming years, even be¬ 
yond our ability to supply it, as steam commu¬ 
nication multiplies. Large quantities of apples 
also fiud their way to the West Indies, and to 
other tropical climates, in exchange for their 
fruits—oranges, lemons, pine-apples, and bana¬ 
nas. These fruits in our cities, brought by steam, 
are a fair indication of the abundance of ours in 
their seaports. This exchange of .the fruits of 
different climates is one of the beautiful things 
of commerce. Pineapples and banauas were 
unknown to multitudes before the advent of 
sea-going steamers. They are now hawked 
about the streets of our seaports in liand-carts 
and wagons, about as plenty and cheap as apples, 
and fiud their way to our remotest villages. 
These considerations should disabuse our minds 
of the notion not unfrequently cherished, that 
it will not pay to plant an apple orchard. The 
market is in no great danger of becoming glutted. 
This has never been, and is still less likely to 
be, in future years. The uses of this fruit will 
increase at home, and both in the dry and fresh 
state, will enter still more largely into our com¬ 
merce. We doubt now if any part of the farm 
pays as well as the thrifty, well cultivated or¬ 
chard. It can not fail to pay still better in the 
future. Our hearts warm at the sight of this 
ruddy fruit, banging from the loaded trees, and 
at the memories that cluster around it, in our 
younger years—apple parings and other scenes 
of social festivity by the farmer’s fireside. 
