said to have been knocked down to the swine in the course of a single season.
As a rule, the planters were indisposed to make any effort to improve their fruit by a system of pruning and grafting; the orchards, numerous as they were, were generally neglected, the plentifulness of the yield rather than the quality being most valued. Many persons who had gone to heavy expense to establish very large collections of fruit trees were not sufficiently interested in their preservation to protect them from the depredations of animals.[1] This indifference was not universal. The greater number of the trees of Colonel Fitzhugh, for instance, had been carefully grafted, and the whole area of ground upon which they stood was surrounded by a locust fence.[2] Six or seven years after the scions were planted, they were large enough to bear fruit, so quickly did they arrive at maturity under the influence of the moist climate and the light and sandy soil. The yield was not always consumed either by the hogs or the different persons belonging to the estates on which the trees were situated; the popularity of cider induced many landowners to rent their orchards, and a considerable income was secured from this source. Thus in 1697, Mrs. Mary Naylor, of Elizabeth City County, received from Jacob Walker ten pounds sterling for the lease of her fruit trees in that year.[3] Fitzhugh in describing his orchard of twenty-five hundred apple trees, declared that it ought in a few years to bring in an annual sum of fifteen thousand pounds of tobacco.[4]
Glover during his visit to Virginia remarked upon the
