Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/162

156 No effort is recorded of any attempt to cultivate or improve it.

A kind of chinquapin chestnut (Castanopsis chrysophylla), is a symmetrical growing tree, fifty to one hundred feet high, bearing abundantly a small, hardshell chestnut, sweet and edible.

It is not too much to say that all the valleys and foothills of Oregon are fruit lands, and abound in choice spots for the different fruits cultivated in our climate.

As perhaps, is always true in a new country, the fruits of Willamette Valley were uniformly large and free from insect pests or fungus blights, consequently made a superlatively fine showing, stood handling and transportation much better than the fruits of this valley to-day, kept much longer and better; in fact, our winter apples and pears generally kept until late in the spring. I premise that persistent and thorough spraying may correct the present degenerate condition—pests and blight.

In those days it was not uncommon for Yellow Newtowns, Spitzenburgs, Winesap, American Pippin, and the Easter Buerre pear, to keep well, sometimes marketable as late as April and May. The Winesap was then a fine keeper, as was also the Winter Nellis and Easter Buerre.

We have always had the reputation of growing the largest fruits, proven at all the World's fairs in this country, since at Philadelphia in 1876. Yet larger were the first fruits in the fifties and sixties. A letter from Mr. John Barnard, published in the Oregonian, a few days since, will give some idea of the size of the Gloria Mundi apple, which in those days was not uncommonly 24 to 36 ounces in weight. Other apples were accordingly large. I quote:

In 1856, fifty years ago, there was an apple grown in Benton County, Oregon, purchased by my brother, A. D. Barnard, of Corvallis. He paid $5 for that apple, and had a tin box made for it, and sent to me