trees. The year 1860 showed a large crop, estimated equal

The requisite fertilizfound in hard wood Particular care is refrom the tree. Salt

to one hundred baskets to the acre. ing elements for the peach may be ashes, applied liberally to the land. quired to keep out the borer or worm strewn around the tree at the roots and just below the soil, is said to be an excellent preventive and was used with excellent results at Cherry Hill by Mrs. M. E. Mix forty years ago.

DAIRY.

Griswold I. Gilbert, Esq., reports that in 1840 he was milking seventy quarts milk a day, which sold at the farm for three cents a quart during the summer, and was delivered in the city at five cents; six cents was the winter price at retail. William Bradley was earlier in the business, commencing probably about 1830, but the daily average of milk from the town in 1840 did not exceed four hundred quarts, supplied by a few farmers near the city.

The present year of 1886, Mr. W. Benham gives a list of twenty-six different parties carrying milk to the city, aggregating very nearly six thousand quarts daily, at a retail price of six cents in summer to eight cents in winter, with the wholesale price at the farm at two and a half cents to three and a half cents a quart, embracing the whole town for the supply.

A new industry has this year been begun in New Haven to separate cream by the centrifugal process. The company sell their butter at thirty-six cents retail price, and pay for milk three cents and four cents a quart summer and winter. The milk delivered to them is subject to inspection and must contain twelve and one-half per cent. solids. Milk which does not bear this test is rejected.

No particular breed of cows is retained by milkmen. Those in use are mostly from native cattle bred to grades of Shorthorn or Holstein stock.

CHERRY AND MULBERRY TREES.

In 1775 Benj. Douglass, by profession a lawyer, planted an orchard of sixty-four cherry trees just outside of the New Haven town limits near East Rock, all of grafted trees. This was upon the red-rock ridge overlooking the Quinnipiac valley on the farm known for a long time as the Hubbard farm.

The people of the town paticipated to some extent in the celebrated morus multicaulis excitement. Barber says

that in 1836 upwards of one hundred acres of land were under preparation for raising mulberry trees at a point about three miles north of New Haven. The editor of this history well remembers helping to pick mulberry leaves at that date to feed silk worms reared by his grandmother, Mrs. Mary E. Mix, in the garret of the old house at Cherry Hill. A goodly supply of large yellow cocoons resulted, from which silk of excellent quality was reeled and spun. The worms throve upon the leaves of the ordinary white mulberry. Considerable silk was also made on the north slope of Mill Rock on the farm now owned by Mr. C. P. Augur. Reference is made in another part of this volume to the earlier efforts to produce silk.

PUBLIC WORKS.

CHESHIRE ROAD.

HE old Cheshire road or "Long Lane," as a part of it seems to have been called in early times, has always been the principal thoroughfare of Hamden. It was laid out in 1686 and again in 1722, and is the prolongation of Dixwell avenue of New Haven, leading out of Broadway. It follows the best route for a road, being upon the natural and easy grade of the New Haven and Hamden plain, thus avoiding the hills and depressions of the other roads leading northward. The earliest roadway in this direction, from the New Haven center, appears to have been the "way to the Plains," and it is supposed to have first been in the neighborhood of the present Canal street or Ashmun street, of New Haven. The following extracts from the Proprietors' Records of New Haven, will show the successive steps taken to secure a road northward over the plain, and to Farmington and Cheshire.

ROAD OR WAY TO THE PLAINS.

In 1641 The General Court of the Colony ordered:

"That Mr. Robt. Newman, Mr. Francis Newman, Thomas Mounson, and Adam Nichols shall view the com" [common] way to the Plains and afterwards it is to be ordered so as may be most comodious for the publique good."

Before the town of Cheshire was organized the road appears to have been known as the "Farmington Road."

FARMINGTON ROAD.

Under the date of December, 1686, we read in the Records:

"The road or way to Farmington begins at the Common near the house of Jno. Johnson and continues where it is leading to the place called Shepherd's Plain and so on to end of West woods and so forward to end of our bounds and to be six rods wide."

Again, we find the following report of the layout:

February 19, 1721-22. "We whose names are underwritten according to an act of the town aforesaid have done according to the best of our discretion in bounding of and marking off Farmington Road through New Haven bounds, beginning upon the western line of Whitehead's lot extending six rods over to Gilbert's north line, then a station between Whitehead's lot and Sackett's set off six rods west, then from Sackett's north bounds west six rods from thence in a direct course near where the path now is up to the Steps, from thence where the path now is until it is north of Lt. Miles's lot, then easterly extending over the river, then strikes upon Miles's north line and is northward then until it meets with Wallingford highway by Daniel Andrews' farm." *

This route was that which had the fewest natural obstacles and was comparatively free from the bowlders which are found in all the new roads on the hills. It required but little working as the soil was, for the greater part of the distance in the town, sandy and gravelly.

This Cheshire road until the completion of the Hartford and New Haven turnpike was the main road out of New Haven leading to Hartford and Boston. Long before Mr. Ives, of Mt. Carmel, was engaged in the business of freighting goods to Boston, using presumably, a part of the Chesh

*See page 344, of copy of Proprietors' Record, 1684-1765.

ire road, an exclusive grant had been given, in 1714, of the business of freighting for a period of seven years. This grant, made by the General Court of the Colony, was in the following terms: "This Assembly do grant to Captain John Munson, of New Haven, that in consideration he hath first been at the cost and charge to set up a wagon to pass and transport passengers and goods between Hartford and New Haven which may be of great benefit and advantage to the Colony in general; that he, said John Munson, shall have and enjoy to him, his executors, administrators, and assigns, the sole and only privilege of transporting persons and goods between the towns aforesaid, during the space of seven years next coming; provided that it shall and may be lawful for any person to transport his own goods or any of his family in his own wagon, anything in this grant to the contrary hereof notwithstanding."

He was required to make monthly trips, starting on the first Monday of every month except December, January, February and March, and to drive with all convenient despatch to Hartford and to return to New Haven in the same week, "bad weather and extraordinary casualties excepted, on penalty of ten shillings each neglect."

HARTFORD AND NEW HAVEN TURNPIKE.

The Hartford and New Haven Turnpike Company was incorporated in 1798. The road extended from Grove street in New Haven, along Whitney avenue, and crossed the lake just above the dam at Whitneyville by the same covered truss bridge which now spans the channel of the narrow part of the lake higher up, and was thence extended northward through the town, being the same main road now used from the east side of Whitney Lake to Centerville and beyond. It is practically the prolongation of Whitney avenue, though its course at Whitneyville has of necessity been much changed in consequence of raising the height of the water of the lake. The grade of the old turnpike can