Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1868-04-24
Fruits Gsnerally-Apples-Pe of
the latter Desirable to Cultivate.
BY E. J. HOOPER,


BY E. J. HOOPER.
As the season of fruits will now soon be
upon US, few words regarding them with
connected with them, may not be inappro-
pirate. Apart from the general taste for
fruits, "in their seasons" an inward voice
which we call craviEg-demands these
gifts of nature for certain ends to the phys
ical welfare of man. They are not only
nutricious, but they are also medicinal in
their properties. They produce certain
beneficial changes in the blood (which medi-
cal men call alterativel, which alters the
blood from an unhealthy to its healthy con-
dition consequently, by the use of ripe
fruits, many diseases lurking in the system
are either neutralized or removed. Many
fruits have the peculiar medicinal property
of "cooling the blood as it is termed, or
in other words, rendering it less liable
to feverish or infamable excitement.-
In European countries, where the vast
multitudes of populations actually en-
cumber the limited space, fruits, although
largely cultivated, rarely except the
most common Of the small fruits, fall to the
lot of many millions of beings cabined,
cribbed and penned in the numerous large
cities and towns. Even to the wealthy,
peaches, grapes and pears are a luxury-a
desert. TO the poor these expensive fruits
are Tdntalus: few live under their own
"vines and tig-trees )" and where fg-trees
grow they are dealt out to those who
neither work nor delve. May we not at
tribute very many diseases affecting the
pent up, impoverished artisans and labor
ers of all large towns In the United
States, happily, the people have an oppor-
tunity to seek and to obtain portion of
Gov 10 ia
are not sufficiently plentiful to supply the
wants of all, yet fruit, to a certain extent,
may be obtained by the poorest of city
populations.
1t is worthy of remark that, notwith-
standing the lavish libela atty of many of
our hOusekeepers, with their Willingness to
pay the largest prices for the best produc-
tions of our markets, we find few fruits
offered for sale of first class production
Surely the fifty to one hundred per cent
higher prices paid for the very superior
cultivated and perfected fruits found and
sold in the markets, would be an all suffi-
cient premium to induce the fruit-grower
to devote his attention to procure the
choicest varieties of different kinds of
fruit. For some distance Immediately
around Cincinnati, of late years, some of our
most valuable fruits have very much de-
the want of plenty of insectivorous birds to
destroy the destructive worms and bugs
Pears seem to do better (but even these are
more deformed and knotty than they were
formerly than grapes, apples, peaches and
plums. But we should still persevere, at
any rate on rather thinner-or white-oak
soils, where these fruits seem now to
flourish best, and about twelve miles from
the city.
Fruit, in perfection, should be full-sized
this is remarkable in oranges, pine apples,
&C., sound, ripe, fresh, and of the choi-
cest varieties and, when most plentiful,
they possess the best and highest flavor
When not intended for culinary purposes,
the earlier in the day they are eaten the
better, as they will be found the most in
MIGRATING stimulus for other food few
hours afterward.
With wonderous adaptation to mans
convenience and EN- oyment, one delicious
fruit succeeds another. Thus, when straw
berries and currants begin to fail, raspber-
ries and cherries are ready, succeeded by
blackberries and whortleberries then
comes the sweet, juicy, beautiful peach, the
nectarine Though rarely obtained here, on
account of the curculio), and plum (pre-
served from the curculio som times with
great care), followed by the luscious grape,
the mellow pear, and the crisp-snapping
apple, in all their various sorts and sizes,
which continue on, and we never tire of
them.
"The luscious peach, the blooming nectarine,
Among the precious fruits of earth are seen;
Fruitful Pomona supplies the busy mart,
And suits mans palate, whether sweet or tart,
On the use of unripe fruits, the Journal
of Health thus sets forth
cit is very pretty to talk of fruits as the
gift of nature, which, as meant for man s
refreshment cannot, we are told, be inJu-
rious. But people ought to define what
they mean by fruit. If it be the matured
production of tree or shrub, in which the
saccharine matter is properly evolved and
distributed through the pulpy matter with
plenty of juicy matter,) which has itself
lost it's early tenacity in other words, if it
be ripe fruit they mean, we can see no OBJ
jcctions to moderate eating of it. But if
they libel the worship of Somona to such q
degree as to call early green apples and
pears, little shriveled peaches, water-melons
without particle of saccharine juice in
them, plums as hard as bullets, fit offerings
at her shrine, and suitable food for either
q rustic a civic population, why the1
we would commend the immature dietlsts
to eat what they recommend. AS vel
might we insist on the consumption of dar
mel because it grows with nutritious grain
or of ergot because it is part of the rye, as
talk of such vile trash as half of The frui
which is hawked about season after season
being not fit for food for any animals excep
swine, and they will give an extra turn afte1
meal of it." And then, again. Be it re
membered that the eating of ripe fruit does
not imply the necessity of swallowing the
skin and stone or seed, as many are in tht
fashion of doing. Certain it is-to say
nothing of the labor to which the poo
stomach is put on the occasion-nature
never intended those parts of the fruit t
be eaten. The one is an external covering
for the purpose of protecting the nutritious
part proper, the other for perpetuating the
plant"
AS apple growing affords so little en-
couragement at present to go into tina
business, we will wind up our presen
paper by noticing the cultivation of some
of the other fruits. Pears undoubtedly arr
a success here, although even that excel
lent and most profitable sort, the Bartlett
has been subject to kuottiness of late. Blu
this fruit, in general, does well-far beyond
the apple. We always feel when speakir
about pears that we can never say to-
much in favor of the Bartlett. Everywhere
i thic kind leads all others in nODn1arity an(