Part 73

I am induced to send you some remarks upon Horticultural matters, from observing your disposition to make your magazine not merely a record of specific processes, and a register of plants and fruits, but also a chronicle of the yearly progress and condition of the Horticultural art. I should be glad if I could in any degree thus repay the pleasure which others have given me through your numbers, by reciprocal efforts.

The Indiana Horticultural State fair is held annually, on the 4th and 5th of October. Experience has shown that it should be earlier; for, although a better assortment of late fruits, in which, hitherto, we have chiefly excelled, is secured, it is at the expense of small fruits and flowers. The floral exhibition was meagre—the frost having already visited and despoiled our gardens. The chief attraction, as, in an agricultural community, it must long continue to be, was the exhibition of fruit. My recollection of New England fruits, after an absence of more than ten years, is not distinct; but my impression is, that so fine a collection of fruits could scarcely be shown there. The luxuriance of the peach, the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so congenial, produces fruits which are very large without being coarse-fleshed; the flavor concentrated, and the color very high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the East, that our apples surpass those to which they have been accustomed. Many fruits which I remember in Connecticut as light-colored, appear with us almost refulgent. All summer and early fall apples were gone before our exhibition; but between seventy and a hundred varieties of winter apples were exhibited. We never expect to see finer. Our most popular winter apples are: Yellow Bellflower; White Bellflower (called Detroit by the gentlemen of Cincinnati Horticultural Society—but for reasons which are not satisfactory to my mind. What has become of the White Bellflower of Coxe, if this is not it?) Newtown Spitzenberg, exceedingly fine with us; Canfield, Jennetting or Neverfail, escaping spring frosts by late blossoming, very hardy, a great bearer every year; the fruit comes into eating in February, is tender, juicy, mild and sprightly, and preferred with us to the Green Newtown pippin—keeping full as well, bearing better, the pulp much more manageable in the mouth, and the apple has the peculiar property of bearing frosts, and even freezing, without material injury; Green Newtown pippin; Michael Henry pippin (very fine); Pryor’s Red, in flavor resembling the New England Seek-no-further; Golden Russet, the prince of small apples, and resembling a fine butter-pear more nearly than any apple in our orchards—an enormous bearer; some limbs exhibited were clustered with fruit, more like bunches of grapes than apples; Milam, favorite early winter; Rambo, the same. But the apple most universally cultivated is the Vandervere pippin, only a second or third-rate table apple, but having other qualities which quite ravish the hearts of our farmers. The tree is remarkably vigorous and healthy; it almost never fails in a crop; when all others miss, the Vandervere pippin hits; the fruit, which is very large and comely, is a late winter fruit—yet swells so quickly as to be the first and best summer cooking apple. If its flesh (which is coarse) were fine, and its (too sharp) flavor equalled that of the Golden Russet, it would stand without a rival, or near neighbor, at the very head of the list of winter apples. As it is, it is a first-rate tree, bearing a second-rate apple. A hybrid between it and the Golden Russet, or Newtown Spitzenberg, appropriating the virtues of both, would leave little more to be hoped for or wished. The Baldwin has never come up to its eastern reputation with us; the Rhode Island Greening is eaten for the sake of “auld lang syne;” the Roxbury russet is not yet in bearing—instead of it several false varieties have been presented at our exhibitions. All the classic apples of your orchards are planted here, but are yet on probation.

Nothing can exhibit better the folly of trusting to seedling orchards for fruit, for a main supply, than our experience in this matter. The early settlers could not bring trees from Kentucky, Virginia or Pennsylvania—and, as the next resort, brought and planted seeds of popular apples. A later population found no nurseries to supply the awakening demand for fruit-trees, and resorted also to planting seed. That which, at first, sprang from necessity, has been continued from habit, and from an erroneous opinion that seedling fruit was better than grafted. An immense number of seedling trees are found in our State. Since the Indiana Horticultural Society began to collect specimens of these, more than one hundred and fifty varieties have been sent up for inspection. Our rule is to reject every apple which, the habits of the tree and the quality of its fruit being considered, has a superior or equal already in cultivation. Of all the number presented, not six have vindicated their claims to a name or a place—and not more than three will probably be known ten years hence. While, then, we encourage cultivators to raise seedlings experimentally, it is the clearest folly to reject the established varieties and trust to inferior seedling orchards. From facts which I have collected there has been planted, during the past year, in this State, at least one hundred thousand apple-trees. Every year the demand increases. It is supposed that the next year will surpass this by at least twenty-five thousand.

In connection with apple orchards, our farmers are increasingly zealous in pear cultivation. We are fortunate in having secured to our nurseries not only the most approved old varieties, but the choicest new pears of British, Continental or American origin. A few years ago to each one hundred apple-trees, our nurseries sold, perhaps, two pear-trees; now they sell at least twenty to a hundred. Very large pear orchards are established, and in some instances are now beginning to bear. I purchased Williams’s Bon Chrétien in our market last fall for seventy-five cents the bushel. This pear, with the St. Michael’s, Beurré Diel, Beurré d’Aremberg, Passe Colmar, Duchess d’Angoulême, Seckel, and Marie Louise, are the most widely diffused, and all of them regularly at our exhibitions. Every year enables us to test other varieties. The Passe Colmar and Beurré d’Aremberg have done exceedingly well—a branch of the latter, about eighteen inches in length, was exhibited at our Fair, bearing over twenty pears, none of which were smaller than a turkey’s egg. The demand for pear-trees, this year, has been such that our nurseries have not been able to answer it—and they are swept almost entirely clean. I may as well mention here that, beside many more neighborhood nurseries, there are in this State eighteen which are large and skillfully conducted.

The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their general cultivation. Apple-trees, not under ten feet high, and finely grown, sell at ten, and pears at twenty cents; and in some nurseries, apples may be had at six cents. This price, it should be recollected, is in a community where corn brings from twelve to twenty cents only, a bushel; wheat sells from forty-five to fifty; hay at five dollars the ton. During the season of 1843-’44, apples of the finest sorts (Jennetting, green Newtown pippin, etc.), sold at my door, as late as April, for twenty-five cents a bushel—and dull at that. This winter they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is increasingly turned to the cultivation of apples for exportation. Our inland orchards will soon find an outlet, both to the Ohio River by railroad, and the Lakes by canal. The effects of such a deluge of fruit is worthy of some speculation. It will diminish the price but increase the profit of fruit. An analogous case is seen in the penny-postage system of England. Fruit will become more generally and largely an article, not of luxury, but of daily and ordinary diet. It will find its way down to the poorest table—and the quantity consumed will make up in profit to the dealer, what is lost in lessening its price. A few years and the apple crop will be a matter of reckoning by farmers and speculators, just as is now, the potato crop, the wheat crop, the pork, etc. Nor will it create a home market alone. By care it may be exported with such facility, that the world will receive it as a part of its diet. It will, in this respect, follow the history of grains and edible roots, and from a local and limited use, the apple and the pear will become articles of universal demand. The reasons of such an opinion are few and simple. It is a fruit always palatable—and as such, will be welcome to mankind whatever their tastes, if it can be brought within their reach. The western States will, before many years, be forested with orchards. The fruit bears exportation kindly. Thus there will be a supply; a possibility of distributing it by commerce, to meet a taste already existing. These views may seem fanciful—may prove so; but they are analogical. Nor, if I inherit my three score years and ten, do I expect to die, until the apple crop of the United States shall surpass the potato crop in value, both for man and beast. It has the double quality of palatableness, raw or cooked—it is a permanent crop, not requiring annual planting—and it produces more bushels to the acre than corn, wheat, or, on an average, than potatoes. The calculations may be made, allowing an average of fifteen bushels to a tree. The same reasoning is true of the pear; it and the apple, are to hold a place yet, as universal eatables—a fruit-grain, not known in their past history. If not another tree should be set in this county (Marion County), in ten years the annual crop of apples will be 200,000 bushels. But Wayne County has double our number of trees; suppose, however, the ninety counties of Indiana to have only 25 trees to a quarter section of land, i. e. to each 160 acres, the crop, of fifteen bushels a tree, would be nearly two millions.

The past year has greatly increased the cultivation of small fruits in the State. Strawberries are found in almost every garden, and of select sorts. None among them all is more popular—or more deservedly so—than Hovey’s Seedling. We have a native white strawberry, removed from our meadows to our gardens, which produces fruit of superior fragrance and flavor. The crop is not large—but continues gradually ripening for many weeks. The blackberry is introduced to the garden among us. The fruit sells at our market for from three to five cents—profit is not therefore the motive for cultivating it, but improvement. I have a white variety. “What color is a black-berry when it is green?” We used to say red, but now we have ripe black-berries which are white, and green black-berries which are red. Assorted gooseberries and the new raspberries, Franconia and Fastolff are finding their way into our gardens. The Antwerps we have long had in abundance. If next spring I can produce rhubarb weighing two pounds to the stalk, shall I have surpassed you? I have a seedling which last year, without good cultivation, produced petioles weighing from eighteen to twenty ounces. My wrist is not very delicate, and yet it is much smaller in girth than they were.

In no department is there more decided advance among our citizens than in floriculture. In all our rising towns, yards and gardens are to be found choicely stocked. All hardy bulbs are now sought after. Ornamental shrubs are taken from our forests, or imported from abroad, in great variety. Altheas, rose acacia, jasmin, calycanthus, snowberry, snowball, sumach, syringas, spicewood, shepherdia, dogwood, redwood, and other hardy shrubs abound. The rose is an especial favorite. The Bengal, Tea and Noisettes bear our winters in the open garden with but slight protection. The Bourbon and Remontantes will, however, drive out all old and ordinary varieties. The gardens of this town would afford about sixty varieties of roses, which would be reckoned first rate in Boston or Philadelphia.

While New England suffered under a season of drought, on this side of the mountains the season was uncommonly fine—scarcely a week elapsed without copious showers, and gardens remained moist the whole season. Fruits ripened from two to three weeks earlier than usual. In consequence of this, winter fruits are rapidly decaying. To-day is Christmas, the weather is spring-like—no snow—the thermometer this morning, forty degrees. My Noisettes retain their terminal leaves green; and in the southward-looking dells of the woods, grasses and herbs are yet of a vivid green. Birds are still here—three this morning were singing on the trees in my yard. There are some curious facts in the early history of horticulture in this region, which I meant to have included in this communication; but insensibly I have, already, prolonged it beyond, I fear, a convenient space for your magazine. I yield it to you for cutting, carving, suppressing, or whatever other operation will fit it for your purpose.

A letter published in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, February, 1845.

BROWNE’s AMERICAN POULTRY YARD.

Let no man turn up his contemptuous nose at this Treatise until he has traced the manifold relations of eggs and capons to cake, company, and civilization. Banish the barnyard, and the universal aldermanhood would shrink and grow lean; cup-cakes and sponge-cakes, omelets, whips and legionary confections, would become mere dreams of remembrance.

Every friend of the trencher, every notable housewife, complacently glorious amidst stacks of praised and devoured cake, has an interest in this book. There is, therefore, a certain interest which every civilized community should take in the progress of the great art of fowl-breeding.

There are striking analogies, also, which should be noticed by every comparative psychologist. The doctrine of transmigration has some of its strongest proofs in the Kingdom of Poultry. The glowing comb, the haughty carriage, the resplendent tail-feathers, and ostentatious crowing of the lord of the barn-yard creation, reveals to the sagacious reasoner either the origin or destination of many other “lords of creation.”

Nor can one mistake the resemblances traceable in the gentler sex of hens. Some there are industrious only in scratching and cackling, but nervous, gadding, restless; never content at home, never so happy as when at work in a new-made garden, and sagacious always of the very spots which are most precious in the owner’s eyes. Are these the types of human busybodies, or are these resemblances only accidental? Others are discreet, domestic, prolific, useful and happy hens, human and feathered. Many there are neglectful. Some fowls are laborious egg-layers, but poor setters; others disdain the pains of laying, but are quite willing of a leisure summer’s month to set awhile upon other eggs.

In the management, too, of their families, can any candid man resist the evidence of resemblances and affiliations between hens and humanity? Here a hen walks forth from her nest with but a single chick; the whole farm is too small for her anxious spirit. On this one precious pledge she bestows more clucking, more research and scratching, than a discreet old matron of many broods would upon five annual generations! And after all, what is the little brat good for—lazy and worked for, but never taught to work, it lives a few months petted and spoiled—dies of neglect, or is anatomized by some science-loving weasel! Other, and unnatural hens there are, to whom the vast brood of peeping, chirping chicks is but a burden. They seem to have thoughts of their own, and are perplexed and interrupted by the cares needful for their household. Could we pry into the secrets of this race, doubtless there would be found to be literary mothers, too busy for the general good to have much time for special duties. We cannot stop now to draw out these analogies, so well worthy the study of mental philosophers; else we should exhibit the distinctions of rank, race, and culture, in this interesting kingdom. There are nice questions of pedigree, there are points in relation to feathers and top-knots, combs and spurs, tail-feathers and wing-feathers, neck-hackles and toes, which are worthy the attention of any Calhoun of the barn-yard. The more savory but homely considerations of fattening, slaying, dressing, selling, stuffing, cooking, carving, distributing, eating and digestion, must be left to our readers’ own reflections. Meanwhile, any man that owns a hen, or has a coop in prospect, may buy this book, certain of his money’s worth. Book-farming and book-fowling are better than nothing.

Published by A. O. Moore & Co., New York. Price $1 00.

REFLECTIONS ON THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.

The labor of another year has passed beyond our reach. We can alter nothing, and the past is of no use to us except as a lesson for the future. The soil that the plow ripped up, in the spring, has yielded its harvest, its work is closed, its fruits garnered. The tree whose boughs grew green when the singing of birds proclaimed that spring was come, has ripened its fruit, perfected its growth, its store is gathered, and its leaves are lying beneath it, and slowly returning to the earth from which they sprang. Only here and there, on a bright morning, do we see one of those birds which, a few months ago, builded their nest, watched their young, or taught the nestlings how to fly—young and old, with their grace of motion and sweet notes, are gone to a fairer clime. These changes one cannot help noticing; and no meditative mind can avoid many thoughts which flow out of them. Where are the harvests garnered which grew in the soil of the human heart? What thoughts and generous purposes have been ripened and stored up like fruit, and what ones have fallen and perished like leaves? Our vernal orchards never stood, within our remembrance, in such a glory of bloom; yet when the fruit should have set, most of the blossoms proved vain. And how many good purposes and fair resolutions have so perished within us! Have we, like the trees which we love and care for, made growth, of root and branch? Everything in nature has gradually assumed a preparation for winter. Those frosts and that ice which would have sent such mischief upon the leaves of summer, now lie, without harm, upon orchard and garden. Are we ripe and ready, too, for such a winter as adversity brings upon men?

A.D. 1845.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Note:

This book contains many words that use alternate spellings, are misspelled, made-up, or obsolete. All were retained as printed.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, like this.

Footnotes were numbered in sequence and moved to the end of the section in which the anchor occurs.

Obvious printing errors were corrected, such as duplicate words, words in the wrong order, upside down, backwards, partially printed or unprinted letters and punctuation. Inconsistent punctuation (such as commas contained inside close parentheses) was corrected.

Inconsistencies noted, but not changed:

Use of capitals and lower case letters for botanical names Use of italics for “i. e.” Feb. 29th, 1845, for date of letter from A. J. Downing Period not used to separate dollars from cents in footnote Denominator missing in fraction: “rain 6-1/ , inches;”