for special mention, and we can easily credit the story of the prudent housekeeper who sent her child to the market for the smallest head he could find, and came home bending under the weight of a fortypounder."

We confess it with humiliation that, on our gardens west of Greeley, we have seen acres of cabbage, three-fourths of which were too small to market, and, of those that were marketed, some were not bigger than a man's fist. We also find in Professor Cassiday's report from the Agricultural College, at which he filled the chair of horticulture, that the average size of the largest kind of late cabbage, on land highly manured, was less than seven pounds. This, too, is heavy clay land, well adapted to cabbage. We quote farther from Pabor's report: "The time will come, and that in the not far distant future, when vast establishments for canning fruit will be scattered all over the Territory, and the berries of Colorado be the delight of the epicure, and the never-failing resource of the careful housewife, whose 'sweetmeat' days will be among the events of the past." Mr. Pabor says that he is "indebted in the main, for these facts, to William N. Byers, of The News." He also quotes W. R. Thomas as authority. This is taken from Governor McCook's address at the State Fair: A savings bank" (that is the land) "crammed with riches since Noah's floodand therefore ready to honor drafts to an unlimited amount; for irrigated land never wears out, as the experience of Eastern nations testifies."

Now, Robert Boyd is our most extensive market gardener. He shipped, last year, from his farm, thirty-five car-loads of cabbage and onions. He calls ten tons of cabbage about his average. He has a bottom farm about three miles west of Greeley. He puts on it all the manure he can get. He keeps a herd of cattle out on the plains in summer, and winters them on the farm for the manure. He informs me that he thinks of having sheep manure shipped from Carr Station, some forty miles, on the cars. He has a switch on his farm. This shows that even irrigated bottom land needs manure in Colorado; and of course upper bench land still more. It might be here said, in connection with the cabbage business, that the price is generally about fifty cents per hundred in the fall, and that it scarcely reaches $1 when kept to spring; that cabbage worm and cabbage lice are as bad here as anywhere, and that all injurious insects have now to be contended with the same as East, although this was not the case in the early days; and N. C. Meeker wrote an article to The New York Tribune, about our second year here, glorying in our exemption from all these pests, except the potato bug and locust.

Well, in reference to Greeley horticulture, we soon found that there was no market to speak of for vegetables. Denver was then a small city, and was supplied for the most part from the immediate vicinity. Small fruit sold well at first, but gradually declined, and last year's raspberries sold for 123 cents a quart. The bushes have to be covered for the winter some six inches deep with dirt, and uncovered in the spring, which labor makes a crop at the above price unremunerative. Strawberries have also to be covered and the ground heavily manured, and many have stopped raising this fruit on account of the low prices prevailing a few years ago. As a consequence, the price became better last year. But it is easy to glut the market with any of these small fruits. Currants and gooseberries were an unsalable drug in the market last year, and the currant worm has destroyed all bushes of any age. Still, Greeley now aspires to the title of the "Garden City of Colorado," and it is true much gardening has been done here for the last dozen of years or so, and that irrigation, if you can only get enough of water, is far ahead of rainfall for either vegetables or small fruit.

A pickle factory was started here last year by the Kuner Brothers, and they got enough of cucumbers to last their trade some two or three years. Tomatoes they bought and shipped to Denver for canning, but lost many before they could be put up. So the firm will handle nothing of this kind here next summer.

It has been grown

The celery business is now attracting attention. in considerable quantities for many years, but only for the state trade; but now it is thought that Colorado can easily supply the trade west of the Missouri river, since we can raise by irrigation, on our uplands, a superior article to that produced around Kalamazoo, Michigan. Likely a large area will be planted the coming season.

As for nursery business, it has been a failure, since fruit is a failure. All the early attempts in this line ruined the parties that undertook them. J. H. Foster persevered as long as he had a cent to experiment with. The grasshoppers in those days made matters worse. Mr. Meeker undertook both gardening and nursery business on a small scale, and failed in both. A. E. Gipson succeeded in so far as having his stock live and thrive, but the local sale was small, and his large stock of crab apples became unsalable after the blight attacked the crab apple orchards. He sold out last winter, and went to Denver to engage in the banking business, and his nursery, in which he took so much pride, and on which he expended so much enthusiasm, will soon be a thing of the past.

We started out by saying that many more intended to go into small

fruit raising and gardening than did to engage in general farming, but the idea had soon to be abandoned for the most part, and those who did not wish to farm either left or went into some other business. As a result of this, the town lots and small parcels of land near town fell in value soon after the spring of 1871.

During the first year the rise in town property was quite marked, that is to say, compared with the prices charged by the colony to its members. This was $50 for corner lots and $25 for inside ones, wherever situated. The value of these varied very much, especially in the business part of town, so that some lots costing only $50 each in one year, were worth $1,000. Perhaps the average value of all business lots on Main street, in the spring of 1871, was $500, while some remoter, less favorably situated business lots were not worth much more than the original colony prices. The business lots remained about stationary for some eight years. Since that time they have steadily advanced, until lately the Union Bank purchased the two lots on which its present building stands, at $10,000. This is the highest figure at which we know of sales being made.

In regard to residence lots, there was a very decided falling off of values after the spring of 1871, and this depression lasted until about 1880. As an illustration, the writer bought, in the spring of 1871, an acre lot in the block where he lived for $300. In 1879 he bought the remaining acre lot of the same block for $125, and this latter lot was much better situated for building.

The reasons for the reduction in value of residence lots were, there were more lots sold by the colony than were needed to accommodate the inhabitants. The number of inhabitants decreased for a number of years; firstly, because many moved out of town to their farms; secondly, because many mechanics, who had found work during the rush of the first year's building, were thrown out of employment and moved elsewhere; and, thirdly, the revival of the growth of Evans, from causes which shall be related, drew away from Greeley many, especially old settlers and cattlemen, who would otherwise have made Greeley their home. In fine, the limited development attained in agriculture during the first seven years dwarfed the business of the town, and impaired its growth as a whole.

In regard to farming lands over the river, it may be said, there was no such rapid increase of value during the first year, and that values remained stationary, or nearly so, while the grasshoppers remained, and increased very slowly for some years afterwards. For a number of years good eighty-acre lots, not more than three or four miles from town, could be bought for $1,000, with water. This latter, however,

was known to be insufficient until enlargements should be made by the farmers themselves, and the increased value for the first seven years was largely due to these enlargements of the canal.

We have spoken of the presence of the grasshoppers as one of the chief reasons for the low value of farming land during the time of their visitations, and here it were as well to relate our experience in regard to these pests.

When the colony came here, the people were informed that the country was liable to occasional inroads of these insects, but from former experience, it was to be expected that they would make their appearance only about once in five or seven years, and there was no reason to believe that their stay would be continuous, or renewed year after year. They had been here in 1867 and had done a good deal of damage where they found any crops in those days. There had been no farther visitation when we arrived here, nor was there until the autumn of 1872 when they came in considerable numbers, and laid their eggs, which hatched out the following spring, and destroyed much wheat. In the autumn of 1873 they appeared in still larger numbers, and earlier, destroying not only corn but late oats; and in the spring of 1874 they hatched out in still larger numbers. This continued until the autumn of 1876 when immigrants made their last voyage through the air to us, and in the spring of the following year only a few sickly ones hatched out, and these mostly died before they had time to get wings and fly away to pastures fresh and green in Kansas or Missouri.

With the flying ones that came from the northwest in the fall, little or nothing could be done on large farms, but a continuous smudge kept to windward of a garden might save it, and John Leavy in this way succeeded in saving some of his precious vegetables and flowers. But the main crops were usually harvested when they put in an appearance; and some crops they liked less well than others. They would leave a potato field alone if a field of corn was near it. Sorghum they had no taste for, and it matured uninjured when every other green thing around it was destroyed. They had a peculiar fondness for onions and resembled their human brethren in their partiality for tobacco. They preferred cabbages to tomatoes; in fact, unlike the potato beetle, had a contempt for the solanum genus of plants, while they delighted in its sister genus the nicotiana. But there was a time when it was doubtful whether the man or the locust was the fittest to survive on these plains, and had the race of locusts retained its pristine vigor there is no knowing to what extent its prodigious reproductiveness would have baffled our destructive ingenuity.