The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1868-09-28


strawberries appear in Broadway g1lcops
about the middle of May, and are sold at
the modest price of fifty cents pint basket.
They are from Virginia. Soon, how
ever, New Jersey begins to give up her
stores, and prices fall from fifty to fifteen
cents from fifteen to FIVE cents and finally,
from FIVE to three cents per pint"
The Lawton blackberry cannot fail to be
very profitable crop to the Virginia
planter and they who first enter on its
cultivation will not only derive great re-
turns from sales of fruit, but from sales Of
plants also.
The crop at once the best paying, and
the most certain that can be planted in this
State, is the grape; but this author on the
whole of his ten acres had not single
vine. Had he three acres in grow III, and
! Virginia skies to ripen them, the produce
of that crop alone, after the third year,
would have figured in his statement as a
| larger item of receipts than the amount Of
his returns from all other sources. The
| only grapes which have heretofore been
grown with profit in the North are the
| Catawba and the Isabella but they have
latterly failed to ripen, and have be-
come 80 much the subject of mildew and
other diseases that unless some substitut,;
are found for these two once popular valle-
| ties, that will ripen in their shorter season,
the Potomac will be the geographical north
ern boundary of the only district in which
this fruit can be proftably cultivated on the
Atlantic side of the continent.
Nor did he plant dwarf pears though he
| says "the price paid for pears seems to be
absurdly high. A citizen Of New York is
the owner of three-year trees, which have
yielded eleven barrels, and produced Sl37.
A young orchard of 400 trees, eight years
after planting, at two crops yielded to its
owner 81 l,450. An acre of the best pear
trees, well managed, will produce more
profit than q fve-hundred acre farm, with-a
twentieth of the care and capital" He
planted neither hops nor gooseberries, nor
any of the many other crops which Viz
ginia planter will with certainty make
more profitable than northern grower
can, by reason of priority of season alone.
What he did plant-strawberries peaches,
and Lawtons excepted-were small, incon-
| siderable beds of fruits and assorted garden
truck, which the aid of his wife and chill
dren would enable him to mature and
market without the expense of hired labor.
The book is valuable record of expert
ence as showing that the culture Of land is
a certain means of subsistence in all places,
: times, and circumstances, if practiced with
reasonable industry and prudence, and
| that the net profits of all tillage will depend
| not on the extent of the area under culti-
yation, but on the degree to which that
area is worked and enriched; that in the
one case, with ordinary crops and indifier-
ent tillage, the more one has under the
plow the greater his loss and in the other
case, with selected crops and culture up
! to the highest standard, the larger the area
the greater his profit. For the rest, we differ
so much from this mans position in climate,
value of land, cost of labor, laborers' board
and social conventionalities, that COM
parison nor example are further appropri-
ate. But all these differences being in our
favor, if he did loeR, how much better may
we do? Not by following his example in
detail but by adopting his principle, which,
concisely stated, is a judiciouS selection OF
crops and high cuLtiUation.
No Virginian would put q hoe into the
hand Of Virginia woman, nor see her
labor in sphere inappropriate to her gen.
tie sex and breeding. He has done enough
in this direction when he has inspired his
whole family with unity of purpose and en-
listed their sympathy and cooperation in
the object he has at heart. His own habits,
now changed to those of industry and thrift,
will be seconded, if not surpassed, by their
diligence and economy, and united in re-
solute determination that prosperity under
new order of things shall be restored,
idlers of every sort will be dismissed, luxu-
rious Incidence and costly tastes will no
more have place on that plantation, and
wife and daughters will quickly discern a
thousand ways il which their industry,
tact, and vigilance can etfectually promote
the supreme object in perfect accordance
with the highest standard Of refinement.
Labor is not the chief constituent Of
value in grapes, apples, pears, hops,
peaches, gooseberries, nor any other peren-
nial. All this class, when once planted,
are planted for generation they are titled
by horse-labor, easily kept clean, can be
gathered at leisure and in bulk, are COM
paratively imperishable, and easily trans
ported any distance to market, and may be
planted here on such O scale of magnitude
that a single crop of either will yield null
tiples Of the whole returns Of the best year
of this ten-acre farm. And from this class
of crops, if every planter will only make a
beginning, wealth will tide into the State
in greater volume than it has ever done
from previous sources, and the latter end
of Virginia, like that of Job, will be more
blessed than her beginning for its prospe-
rity will rest on a firmer basis.
Ten Acres Enough is o catching title, and
the book is indebted to this and a certain
fascination of narrative for having sensa-
tionized that abounding class of trades
folk, mechanics, and professional abortions,
anxiety, are unable to make the two ends
meet. They are allured at once by pic
ture Of country life SO prettily sketched,
so easily attainable, and SO charming q re-
fuge from duns, unsaleable stock, and pro-
tested bills, and are apt to overlook IN the
shaded background the continuous toll the
broken rest and weary watchfulness that
are indispensable to give value to crops OF
small fruits and garden truck, of which the
bulk of this mans returns is made up. A
higher aim, wider scope, more import
ant object corresponding to the paramount
advantages with which Nature has endowed
our State, will mark the distinction between
southern vineyard and Ten -1creS
Er 'agh between q Virginia planter and
Jersey truckster. W. j.
SHoEING HoRsEs.-Robert Bonner, while
summering at Setauket, Long Island, re-
Gently amused himself by treating on the
Dunbar system the feet of an ancient trot-