ANNUAL REPORT—AGRICULTURE. 
35 
FRUIT CULTURE. 
Has made rapid strides in Wisconsin within the past, ten 
years. This is patent enough to everybody familiar with our 
industrial development. The figures of the census only con¬ 
firm what has been to lovers of fruit a ground of rejoicing since 
the fatal winters of long ago, and the hey day of the coccus, 
now pretty well “done for.” 
How much of this success in the protracted contest with cli¬ 
mate, insects, and, worse than all else, the ignorance of the 
public, is j ustly r attributable to the fostering care, stimulation 
and encouragement afforded by this society and the State Hor¬ 
ticultural Society will never be known. But is it not much to 
have contributed anything to so important a result? Who 
can estimate the importance to our present population and to 
the multitudes yet to inhabit this State, of the certain inform- 
tion that, among apples, the Bed Astraclian, Duchess of Old¬ 
enburg, Fameuse, Talman Sweet, Golden Kusset and West- 
field Seek-no-further may be planted with confidence in all 
portions of our state, and that the planting of a large proportion 
of the many varieties with which experiments were made dur¬ 
ing the first twenty or more years of our industrial history is 
equally sure to lead to disappointment and loss, earlier or later? 
Who can estimate the saving of money, patience and comfort 
that will be made by knowing that the Delaware and Concord 
Grapes; the Imperial Gage, Blucher’s Gage, Duane’s Purple 
Gage, and the Lombard Plums, the Doolittle and Purple Cane 
raspberries, and most varieties of currants, gooseberries and 
strawberries, are worthy of our confidence, while the attempt to 
produce peaches, most varieties of cherries other than the Early 
May and large English Morello, and of pears other than the 
Flemish Beauty, is pretty sure to result in failure ? 
To the untiring and resolute nurserymen and careful amateur 
cultivators and farmers, by means of whose intelligent and oft- 
repeated experiments so much has been accomplished, the state 
of Wisconsin and the population of the entire northwest owe a 
