Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/44

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Dr. J. R. Cardwell.

been set out all over the fertile valleys and hillsides, were now coming into bearing; thus her local market was supplied because she was an exporter.

The business decreased from 1860 until 1870. Only a few boxes per steamer of the late winter varieties were sent. These were the Yellow Newtown Pippin, Winesap, Red Cheek Pippin, Genet, and Red Romanite, which, grown in our cooler climate, kept until the California varieties were gone. This marks the decadence of the fruit industry in Oregon. California sent us apples, pears, cherries, plums, prunes, apricots, grapes, and berrries a month or two earlier than we could produce them; and with them came many of the insect pests which she had imported from Australia and the Eastern States, which hitherto had been unknown to us. In our isolation we had no outlet by rail or water for our surplus products. Transportation, such as we had, was enormously expensive. We could not even ship dried fruits. Our elegant orchards were neglected and the fruit allowed to fall to the ground and decay, thus furnishing breeding grounds for the green and woolly "aphis" and the "codlin moth."

To recapitulate: the establishment of orchards in California; the fall of prices to something like a normal standard; over-production, perhaps, on our part—at any rate the lack of demand at remunerative prices for the fruits peculiar to this section—led to carelessness on the part of growers, neglect of the most ordinary precautions, inattention and wastefulness, which resulted not only in spontaneous breeding of insect pests, but also to such conditions of ground and trees that made them favorable to the immeasurably rapid propagation of them, when the establishment of communication with infected points made their introduction not only possible but certain. The natural result of this much-to-be-deplored condition of affairs is too well known to need elaboration. In this