| [INTRODUCTION.] | 9 |
| [CHAPTER II.] | 26 |
| HISTORY OF THE APPLE. | |
| [CHAPTER III.] | 52 |
| PROPAGATION. | |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | 144 |
| DWARFING. | |
| [CHAPTER V.] | 160 |
| DISEASES. | |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | 198 |
| THE SITE FOR AN ORCHARD. | |
| [CHAPTER VII.] | 213 |
| PREPARATION OF THE SOIL FOR AN ORCHARD. | |
| [CHAPTER VIII.] | 229 |
| SELECTION AND PLANTING. | |
| [CHAPTER IX.] | 242 |
| CULTURE, ETC. | |
| [CHAPTER X.] | 251 |
| PHILOSOPHY OF PRUNING. | |
| [CHAPTER XI.] | 263 |
| THINNING. | |
| [CHAPTER XII.] | 275 |
| RIPENING AND PRESERVING FRUITS. | |
| [CHAPTER XIV.] | 294 |
| INSECTS. | |
| [CHAPTER XV.] | 350 |
| CHARACTERS OF FRUITS AND THEIR VALUE. TERMS USED. | |
| [CHAPTER XVI.] | 366 |
| CLASSIFICATION. | |
| [CHAPTER XVII.] | 698 |
| FRUIT LISTS. | |
| [CATALOGUE AND INDEX OF APPLES.] | 711 |
| [INDEX] | 738 |
INTRODUCTION.
IMPORTANCE OF ORCHARD PRODUCTS—GOVERNMENT STATISTICS—GREAT VALUE OF ORCHARD AND GARDEN PRODUCTS—DELIGHTS OF FRUIT CULTURE—TEMPERATE REGIONS THE PROPER FIELD FOR FRUIT CULTURE, AS FOR MENTAL DEVELOPMENT—PLANTS OF CULTURE, PLANTS OF NATURE—NOMADIC CONDITION UNFAVORABLE FOR TERRA-CULTURE—NECESSITIES OF AN INCREASING POPULATION A SPUR—HIGH CIVILIZATION DEMANDS HIGH CULTURE—HORTICULTURE A FINE ART, THE POETRY OF THE FARMER'S LIFE—MORAL INFLUENCES OF FRUIT-CULTURE—SINGULAR LEGISLATION RESPECTING PROPERTY IN FRUIT—INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH—APPLES IN BREAD-MAKING; AS FOOD FOR STOCK—SOURCES AND ROUTES OF INTRODUCTION—AGENCY OF NURSERYMEN—INDIAN ORCHARDS—FRENCH SETTLERS—JOHNNY APPLE-SEED—VARIETIES OF FRUITS, LIKE MAN, FOLLOW PARALLELS OF LATITUDE—LOCAL VARIETIES OF MERIT TO BE CHERISHED—OHIO PURCHASE—SILAS WHARTON—THE PUTNAM LIST.
Few persons have any idea of the great value and importance of the products of our orchards and fruit-gardens. These are generally considered the small things of agriculture, and are overlooked by all but the statist, whose business it is to deal with these minutiæ, to hunt them up, to collocate them, and when he combines these various details and produces the sum total, we are all astonished at the result.
Our government wisely provides for the gathering of statistics at intervals of ten years, and some of the States also take an account of stock and production at intermediate periods, some of them, like Ohio, have a permanent statistician who reports annually to the Governor of the State.
Our Boards of Trade publish the amounts of the leading articles that arrive at and depart from the principal cities, and thus they furnish us much additional information of value. Besides this, the county assessors are sometimes directed to collect statistics upon certain points of interest, and now that we all contribute toward the extinction of the national debt, the United States Assessors in the several districts are put in possession of data, which should be very correct, in regard to certain productions that are specified by act of Congress as liable to taxation. By these several means we may have an opportunity of learning from time to time what are the productions of the country, and their aggregate amounts are surprising to most of us. When they relate to our special interests, they are often very encouraging. This is particularly the case with those persons who have yielded to the popular prejudice that cotton was the main agricultural production of the United States; to such it will be satisfactory to learn that the crop of corn, as reported in the last census, is of nearly equal value, at the usual market prices of each article. Fruit-growers will be encouraged to find that the value of orchard products, according to the same returns, was nearly twenty millions, that of Ohio being nearly one million; of New York, nearly three and three-quarters millions; that the wine crop of the United States, an interest that is still in its infancy, amounted to nearly three and one-quarter millions; and that the valuation of market garden products sums up to more than sixteen millions of dollars' worth. It is to be regretted that for our present purpose, the data are not sufficiently distinct to enable us to ascertain the relative value of the productions of our orchards of apples, pears, peaches, quinces, and the amount and value of the small fruits, as they are termed, since these are variously grouped in the returns of the census takers, and cannot now be separated. Of their great value, however, we may draw our conclusions from separate records that have been kept and reported by individuals, who assert the products of vineyards in some cases to have been as high as three thousand dollars per acre; of strawberries, at one thousand dollars; of pears, at one hundred dollars per tree, which would be four thousand dollars per acre; of apples, at twenty-five bushels per tree, or one thousand bushels per acre, which, at fifty cents per bushel, would produce five hundred dollars.
But, leaving this matter of dollars and cents, who will portray for us the delights incident to fruit-culture? They are of a quiet nature, though solid and enduring. They carry us back to the early days of the history of our race, when "the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ... and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food ... and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." We are left to infer that this dressing and keeping of the garden was but a light and pleasant occupation, unattended with toil and trouble, and that in their natural condition the trees and plants, unaided by culture, yielded food for man. Those were paradisean times, the days of early innocence, when man, created in the image of his Maker, was still obedient to the divine commands; but, after the great transgression, everything was altered, the very ground was cursed, "thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."——From that day to the present hour it has been the lot of man to struggle with difficulties in the cultivation of the soil, and he has been driven to the necessity of constant watchfulness and care to preserve and to improve the various fruits of the earth upon which he subsists. In the tropics, it is true, there are many vegetable productions which are adapted for human food, even in a state of nature, and there we find less necessity for the effort of ingenuity and the application of thought and labor to produce a subsistence. Amid these productive plants of nature, the natives of such regions lead an idle life, and seldom rise above a low scale of advancement; but in the temperate regions of the globe, where the unceasing effort of the inhabitants is required to procure their daily food, we find the greatest development of human energies and ingenuity—there man thinks, and works; there, indeed, he is forced to improve the natural productions of the earth—and there we shall find him progressing. As with everything else, so it is with fruits, some of which were naturally indifferent or even inedible, until subjected to the meliorating influences of high culture, of selection, and of improvement. Here we find our plants of culture, which so well repay the labor and skill bestowed upon them.