572 
STATE HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
hundreds of bushels are, and thousands may be, gathered annually. The crop 
too is a sure one, as they grow mostly on the ridges, they are uot subject to 
frosts, which in the valleys would be destructive to them as well as the fruits. 
Here is a useful lesson from nature. Here it is, that from the tenth of July 
until the last of August, the settler’s family large and small may be found on 
the ridges, with baskets, pails, tubs, &c.; and when the male members, who 
accompanied them in the moorning on their way to some adjacent slough to 
cut bay, return with the team, the women and children, baskets, pails, &c,, 
filled with bushels of berries are taken home. After two or three days of 
such work the man starts with perhaps ten, fifteen or twenty bushels of his 
own and enough for some neighbors to make perhaps thirty bushels, for 
some market, perhaps fifty or sixty miles off, where they are sold for from 
$1.26 to $1.60 per bushel. When he gets back some other one in the neigh¬ 
borhood takes his team Avith a load. In the mean time the picking at home 
goes on, and hundreds of bushels are dried for family use, and for sale. 
I tell you this “huckleberry” business, is a great thing. They are good 
in milk, in sugar and cream—good for pies, short cakes, pudding. Well, 
here is a reason why small fruits are not much sought alter in this section. 
Every family can, or do have plenty of this kind of fruit the year round. It 
takes but very little sugar, in fact, will do very well without any. 
January 12, 1866. 
FEUITS m-EICHLAND COUNTY. 
BY ALBERT S. NEFF, OF WOODSTOCK. 
* * I will try to give you what information I can in regard to the fruits 
of Richland county and our experience. 
First. It is unfavorable so far as I can ascertain. There is scarcely any¬ 
thing in the shape of cultivated fruit grown in this county. I know of but 
little and what is growing is close to the Wisconsin river. Back from the 
river the trees seem so live for a year or two, and then commence to die. 
The tops commence first, and about the next year after that they are dead. 
I know of some orchards that have been set out four or five years. They 
were set out say seventy-five trees in the first place, and now there is not one 
single healthy looking tree in the orchard ; but there are some trees that do 
live. 
Second. The orchards are all differently located. On a soil of clay and 
loam, timber lands, they are productive, and make a heavy growth of wood each 
year. I put out an orchard two years ago last spring, nearly all lived until 
this present year, and seemed to be living thirftily this spring; but I washed 
them rather early with too strong ley, and it hurt a good many of them ; but 
