If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man fights them with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He thus pays and repays the penalty of others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demoralized, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth repels the enemy from a few favorite trees around his dwelling, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds that would help us to make head against our insect foes are slaughtered by reckless boys--many of them big enough to know better--and our perils and losses from enemies who would be contemptible if their numbers did not render them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this; and the first requisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive toward their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and shielded by the ruthless massacre of our feathered friends.
Since the foregoing was written we have had (in 1870) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our section that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider-apples to the vinegar-makers, even at fitly cents per barrel. This establishes the continued capacity of our region to bear Apples, and should invite to the planting of new orchards and the fertilization and renovation of old ones.
The Grass-crop of this, as of many, if not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most important of its annual products; requiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnishing the principal food of its Cattle, and thus contributing essentially to the subsistence of its working animals and to the production of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing proportion of the food of every civilized people. But I propose to speak in this essay of that proportion of the Grass-crop--say 25 to 35 per cent. of the whole--which is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frost and snow have divested the earth of herbage or rendered it inaccessible.