Vermont Watchman And State Journal

From the New England Farmer.
Crab Apples.

Our interest in this fruit was much increased by the display of crab apples at the Fair of the Vermont State Agricultural Society last fall, which included one hundred and five varieties from the garden of the Misses Shipman, near the city of Burlington.
It is with pleasure that we notice a series of articles in the Rural New Yorker, written by F. R. Elliott of Ohio, a distinguished pomologist, on the cultivation of this fruit, with suggestions for the production of new varieties by hybridization, &c. The failures that have attended the introduction of the choice varieties of our common apples into the Northwestern States and Territories have been so numerous that many have come to the conclusion that this section is not adapted to the growth of any but small fruits, such as currants, gooseberries, &c.

Mr. Elliott believes, however, that some varieties of apples may be grown wherever corn will ripen. Indeed, he says that "during the past few years the exhibition tables of horticultural societies in those sections have been supplied with a new class of apples, which, while they have not the size of a large proportion of the old varieties of the Pyrus malus, possess richness of flesh, and eatable quality, almost if not quite equaling them; and from the botanical character in tree—the Pyrus baccata—a hardiwood that insures success to the planter."

At the State Fair the present season, one hundred and thirty varieties of crab apples were exhibited from the same garden or nursery.