Читать книгу American Pomology. Apples - John Aston Warder - Страница 2

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.

In the early periods of the history of our race, while men were nomadic and wandered from place to place, little attention was paid to any department of agricultural improvement, and still less care was bestowed upon horticulture. Indeed, it can scarcely be supposed that, under such conditions, either branch of the art could have existed, any more than they are now found among the wandering hordes of Tartars on the steppes of Asia. So soon, however, as men began to take possession of the soil by a more permanent tenure, agriculture and horticulture also, attracted their chief attention, and were soon developed into arts of life. With advancing civilization, this has been successively more and more the case; the producing art being obliged to keep pace with the increased number of consumers, greater ingenuity was required and was applied to the production of food for the teeming millions of human beings that covered the earth, and, as we find, in China, at the present time, the greatest pains were taken to make the earth yield her increase.

High civilization demands high culture of the soil, and agriculture becomes an honored pursuit, with every department of art and science coming to its assistance. At the same time, and impelled by the same necessities, supported and aided by the same co-adjutors, horticulture also advances in a similar ratio, and, from its very nature, assumes the rank of a fine art, being less essential than pure agriculture, and in some of its branches being rather an ornamental than simply a useful art. It is not admitted, however, that any department of horticulture is to be considered useless, and many of its applications are eminently practical, and result in the production of vast quantities of human food of the most valuable kind. This pursuit always marks the advancement of a community.—As our western pioneers progress in their improvements from the primitive log cabins to the more elegant and substantial dwelling houses, we ever find the garden and the orchard, the vine-arbor and the berry-patch taking their places beside the other evidences of progress. These constitute to them the poetry of common life, of the farmer's life.

The culture of fruits, and gardens also, contributes in no small degree to the improvement of a people by the excellent moral influence it exercises upon them. Everything that makes home attractive must contribute to this desirable end. Beyond the sacred confines of the happy hearthstone, with its dear familiar circle, there can be no more pleasant associations than those of the garden, where, in our tender years, we have aided loved parents, from them taking the first lessons in plant-culture, gathering the luscious fruits of their planting or of our own; nor of the rustic arbor, in whose refreshing shade we have reclined to rest and meditate amid its sheltering canopy of verdure, and where we have gathered the purple berries of the noble vine at a later period of the rolling year; nor of the orchard, with its bounteous supplies of golden and ruddy apples, blushing peaches, and melting pears. With such attractions about our homes, with such ties to be sundered, it is wonderful, and scarcely credible, that youth should ever be induced to wander from them, and to stray into paths of evil. Such happy influences must have a good moral effect upon the young. If it be argued that such luxuries will tend to degrade our morals by making us effeminate and sybaritic, or that such enjoyments may become causes of envy and consequent crime on the part of those who are less highly favored, it may be safely asserted that there is no better cure for fruit-stealing, than to give presents of fruit, and especially of fruit-trees, to your neighbors, particularly to the boys—encourage each to plant and to cherish his own tree, and he will soon learn the meaning of meum and tuum, and will appreciate the beauties of the moral code, which he will be all the more likely to respect in every other particular.

Some of the legislation of our country is a very curious relic of barbarism. According to common law, that which is attached to the soil, may be removed without a breach of propriety, by one who is not an owner of the fee simple; thus, such removal of a vegetable product does not constitute theft or larceny, but simply amounts to a trespass: whereas the taking of fruit from the ground beneath the tree, even though it be defective or decaying, is considered a theft. An unwelcome intruder, or an unbidden guest, may enter our orchard, garden, or vineyard, and help himself at his pleasure to any of our fruits, which we have been most carefully watching and nursing tor months upon trees, for the fruitage of which we may have been laboring and waiting for years, and, forsooth, our only recourse is to sue him at the law, and our only satisfaction, after all the attendant annoyance and expense, is a paltry fine for trespass upon our freehold, which, of course, is not commensurate with our estimate of the value of the articles taken: fruits often possess, in the eyes of the devoted orchardist, a real value much beyond their market price.

Were I asked to describe the location of the fabled fountain of Hygeia, I should decide that it was certainly situated in an orchard; it must have come bubbling from earth that sustained the roots of tree and vine; it must have been shaded by the umbrageous branches of the wide-spreading apple and pear, and it was doubtless approached by alleys that were lined by peach trees laden with their downy fruit, and over-arched by vines bearing rich clusters of the luscious grape, and they were garnished at their sides by the crimson strawberry. Such at least would have been an appropriate setting for so valued a jewel as the fountain of health, and it is certain that the pursuit of fruit-growing is itself conducive to the possession of that priceless blessing. The physical as well as the moral qualities of our nature are wonderfully promoted by these cares. The vigorous exercise they afford us in the open air, the pleasant excitement, the expectation of the results of the first fruits of our plants, tending, training and cultivating them the while, are all so many elements conducive to the highest enjoyment of full health.

The very character of the food furnished by our orchards should be taken into the account, in making up our estimate of their contributions to the health of a community. From them we procure aliment of the most refined character, and it has been urged that the elements of which they are composed are perfected or refined to the highest degree of organization that is possible to occur in vegetable tissues. Such pabulum is not only gratefully refreshing, but it is satisfying—without being gross, it is nutritious. The antiscorbutic effects of ripe fruits, especially those that are acid, are proverbial, and every fever patient has appreciated the relief derived from those that are acidulous. Then as a preventive of the febrile affections peculiar to a miasmatic region, the free use of acid fruits, or even of good sound vinegar made from grapes or apples, is an established fact in medical practice—of which, by the by, prevention is always the better part.

Apples were esteemed an important and valuable article of food in the days of the Romans, for all school boys have read in the ore rotundo of his own flowing measures, what Virgil has said, so much better than his tame translator:

But in more modern times, beside their wonted use as dessert fruit, or evening feast, or cooked in various modes, a French economist "has invented and practiced with great success a method of making bread with common apples, which is said to be very far superior to potato-bread. After having boiled one-third part of peeled apples, he bruised them while quite warm into two-thirds parts of flour, including the proper quantity of yeast, and kneaded the whole without water, the juice of the fruit being quite sufficient; he put the mass into a vessel in which he allowed it to rise for about twelve hours. By this process he obtained a very excellent bread, full of eyes, and extremely light and palatable."1

Nor is this class of food desirable for man alone. Fruits of all kinds, but particularly what may be called the large fruits, such as are grown in our orchards, may be profitably cultivated for feeding our domestic animals. Sweet apples have been especially recommended for fattening swine, and when fed to cows they increase the flow of milk, or produce fat according to the condition of these animals. Think of the luxury of eating apple-fed pork! Why, even the strict Rabbi might overcome his prejudices against such swine flesh! And then dream of enjoying the luxury of fresh rich milk, yellow cream, and golden butter, from your winter dairy, instead of the sky-blue fluid, and the pallid, or an anotto-tinted, but insipid butter, resulting from the meager supplies of nutriment contained in dry hay and fibrous, woody cornstalks. Now this is not unreasonable nor ridiculous. Orchards have been planted with a succession of sweet apples that will sustain swine in a state of most perfect health, growing and fattening simultaneously from June to November; and the later varieties may be cheaply preserved for feeding stock of all kinds during the winter, when they will be best prepared by steaming, and may be fed with the greatest advantage. Our farmers do not appreciate the benefits of having green food for their animals during the winter season. Being blessed with that royal grain, the Indian corn, they do not realize the importance of the provision of roots which is so great a feature in British husbandry; but they have yet to learn, and they will learn, that for us, and under our conditions of labor and climate, they can do still better, and produce still greater results with a combination of hay or straw, corn meal and apples, all properly prepared by means of steam or hot water. Besides, such orchards may be advantageously planted in many places where the soil is not adapted to the production of grain.—The reader is referred to the chapter on select lists in another part of this volume, in which an attempt will be made to present the reader with the opinions of the best pomologists of various parts of the country.

It were an interesting and not unprofitable study to trace the various sources and routes by which fruits have been introduced into different parts of our extended country. In some cases we should find that we were indebted for these luxuries to the efforts of very humble individuals, while in other regions the high character of the orchards is owing to the forethought, knowledge, enterprise, and liberality of some prominent citizen of the infant community, who has freely spent his means and bestowed his cares in providing for others as well as for his own necessities or pleasures. But it is to the intelligent nurserymen of our country that we are especially indebted for the universal diffusion of fruits, and for the selection of the best varieties in each different section. While acting separately, these men were laboring under great disadvantages, and frequently cultivated certain varieties under a diversity of names, as they had received them from various sources. This was a difficulty incident to their isolation, but the organization of Pomological Societies in various parts of the country, has enabled them in a great measure to unravel the confusion of an extended synonymy, and also by comparison and consultation with the most intelligent fruit-growers, they have been prepared to advise the planter as to the best and most profitable varieties to be set out in different soils and situations.

Most of our first orchards were planted with imported trees. The colonists brought plants and seeds. Even now, in many parts of the country, we hear many good fruits designated as English, to indicate that they are considered superior to the native; and we are still importing choice varieties from Europe and other quarters of the globe.

The roving tribes of Indians who inhabited this country when discovered and settled by the whites, had no orchards—they lived by the chase, and only gathered such fruits as were native to the soil. Among the earliest attempts to civilize them, however, those that exerted the greatest influence, were efforts to make them an agricultural people, and of these the planting of fruit-trees was one of the most successful. In many parts of the country we find relics of these old Indian orchards still remaining, and it is probable that from the apple seeds sent by the general government for distribution among the Cherokees in Georgia, we are now reaping some of the most valuable fruits of this species. The early French settlers were famous tree-planters, and we find their traces across the continent, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. These consist in noble pear and apple trees, grown from seeds planted by them, at their early and scattered posts or settlements. These were made far in advance of the pioneers, who have, at a later period, formed the van of civilization, that soon spread into a solid phalanx in its march throughout the great interior valley of the continent.

On the borders of civilization we sometimes meet with a singular being, more savage than polished, and yet useful in his way. Such an one in the early settlement of the northwestern territory was Johnny Apple-seed—a simple-hearted being, who loved to roam through the forests in advance of his fellows, consorting, now with the red man, now with the white, a sort of connecting link—by his white brethren he was, no doubt, considered rather a vagabond, for we do not learn that he had the industry to open farms in the wilderness, the energy to be a great hunter, nor the knowledge and devotion to have made him a useful missionary among the red men. But Johnny had his use in the world. It was his universal custom, when among the whites, to save the seeds of all the best apples he met with. These he carefully preserved and carried with him, and when far away from his white friends, he would select an open spot of ground, prepare the soil, and plant these seeds, upon the principle of the old Spanish custom, that he owed so much to posterity, so that some day, the future traveler or inhabitant of those fertile valleys, might enjoy the fruits of his early efforts. Such was Johnny Apple-seed—did he not erect for himself monuments more worthy, if not more enduring, than piles of marble or statues of brass?

In tracing the progress of fruits through different portions of our country, we should very naturally expect to find the law that governs the movements of men, applying with equal force to the fruits they carry with them. The former have been observed to migrate very nearly on parallels of latitude, so have, in a great degree, the latter; and whenever we find a departure from this order, we may expect to discover a change, and sometimes a deterioration in the characters of the fruits thus removed to a new locality. It is true, much of this alteration, whether improvement or otherwise, may be owing to the difference of soil. Western New York received her early fruits from Connecticut, and Massachusetts; Michigan, Northern Illinois, and later, Wisconsin and Iowa received theirs in a great degree from New York. Ohio and Indiana received their fruits mainly from New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and we may yet trace this in the prevalence of certain leading varieties that are scarcely known, and very little grown on different parallels. The early settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum river, was made by New England-men, and into the "Ohio-purchase," they introduced the leading varieties of the apples of Massachusetts. Among these, the Boston or Roxbury Russet was a prominent favorite, but it was so changed in its appearance as scarcely to be recognized by its old admirers, and it was christened with a new name, the Putnam Russet, under the impression that it was a different variety. Most of the original Putnam varieties have disappeared from the orchards. Kentucky received her fruits in great measure from Virginia; Tennessee from the same source and from North Carolina, and these younger States sent them forward on the great western march with their hardy sons to southern Indiana, southern Illinois, to Missouri, and to Arkansas, in all which regions we find evident traces in the orchards, of the origin of the people who planted them.

Of course, we shall find many deflections from the precise parallel of latitude, some inclining to the south, and many turning to the northward. To the latter we of the West are looking with the greatest interest, since we so often find that the northern fruits do not maintain their high characters in their southern or southwestern migrations, and all winter kinds are apt to become autumnal in their period of ripening, which makes them less valuable; and because, among those from a southern origin, we have discovered many of high merit as to beauty, flavor, and productiveness—and, especially where they are able to mature sufficiently, they prove to be long keepers, thus supplying a want which was not filled by fruits of a northern origin. There may be limits beyond which we cannot transport some sorts to advantage in either direction, but this too will depend very much upon the adaptability of our soils to particular varieties.

In every region where fruit has been cultivated we find local varieties grown from seed, many of these are of sufficient merit to warrant their propagation, and it behooves us to be constantly on the look out for them; for though our lists are already sufficiently large to puzzle the young orchardist in making his selections, we may well reduce the number by weeding out more of the indifferent fruit, at the same time that we are introducing those of a superior character. It has been estimated that there may be as many as one in ten of our seedling orchard trees that would be ranked as "good," but not one in a hundred that could be styled "best."2 Certain individuals have devoted themselves to the troublesome though thankless office of collecting these scattered varieties of decided merit, and from their collections our pomological societies will, from time to time, select and recommend the best for more extended cultivation. Such devoted men as H.N. Gillett, Lewis Jones, Reuben Ragan, A.H. Ernst, who have been industriously engaged in this good work for a quarter of a century, are entitled to the highest commendation; but there are many others who have contributed their full share of benefits by their labors in the same field, to whom also we owe a debt of gratitude. Two of the chief foci in the Ohio valley from which valuable fruits have been distributed most largely, were the settlement at the mouth of the Muskingum, with its Putnam list given below; and a later, but very important introduction of choice fruits, brought into the Miami country by Silas Wharton, a nurseryman from Pennsylvania, who settled among a large body of the religious Society of Friends, in Warren Co., Ohio. The impress of this importation is very manifest in all the country, within a radius of one hundred miles, and some of his fruits are found doing well in the northwestern part of the State of Ohio, in northern Indiana, and in an extended region westward.

There are, no doubt, many other local foci, whence good fruits have radiated to bless regions more or less extensive, and in every neighborhood we find the name of some early pomologist attached to the good fruits that he had introduced, thus adding another synonym to the numerous list of those belonging to so many of our good varieties.

A.W. Putnam commenced an apple nursery in 1794, a few years after the first white settlement at Marietta, Ohio, the first grafts were set in the spring of 1796; they were obtained from Connecticut by Israel Putnam, and were the first set in the State, and grafted by W. Rufus Putnam. Most of the early orchards of the region were planted from this nursery. These grafts were taken from the orchard of Israel Putnam (of wolf-killing memory) in Pomfret, Connecticut. In the Ohio Cultivator for August 1st, 1846, may be found the following authentic list of the varieties propagated:—

"1. Putnam Russet, (Roxbury.)

  2. Seek-no-further, (Westfield.)

  3. Early Chandler.

  4. Gilliflower.

  5. Pound Royal, (Lowell).

  6. Natural, (a seedling).

  7. Rhode Island Greening.

  8. Yellow Greening.

  9. Golden Pippin.

10. Long Island Pippin.

11. Tallman Sweeting.

12. Striped Sweeting.

13. Honey Greening.

14. Kent Pippin.

15. Cooper.

16. Striped Gilliflower.

17. Black, do.

18. Prolific Beauty.

19. Queening, (Summer Queen?)

20. English Pearmain.

21. Green Pippin.

22. Spitzenberg, (Esopus?)

Many of these have disappeared from the orchards and from the nurserymen's catalogues."