THIs new rural organization, of which Horace Greeley is president, held its quarterly session June 24th, and Bat down to an ample collation, after which straw-berries were discussed, and many excellent papers and addresses made by Andrew S. Fuller, on the origin of the strawberry; Mr. J. B. Lyman, on the strawberry market; Dr. F. M. Hexamer, on culture and varieties; and Henry T. Williams, upon the difficulties of strawberry growing. We present condensed notes of the most important addresses:

Address Of J.B.Lyman. New York As A Strawberry Market

I have been astonished at the evidences of enormous growth in the strawberry business. From the frequency with which this most delicate of fruits is met with on our tables, from the length of fruit trains and the number and size of coasting vessels engaged in the transport of strawberries, we have supposed that the business bad largely increased. But a day spent among the commission men along our wharves has convinced me that we have now three great national fruits, the traffic in which must be reckoned by millions of packages, and the proceeds from which make handsome incomes for thousands of farmers. These great fruits are the strawberry, the peach, and the apple. The strawberry season now covers one-fourth of the year. On the 10th of April 560 packages of berries were received by the Charleston steamer. Last year the shipments from Rochester, and the cool, late clay lands of Wayne and St. Lawrence and Niagara counties in New York, lasted 'till the 20th of July. Beginning at the southern margin of the Republic, on soils warmed by mellow airs from the Lower Gulf, and closing with the growth of Upper Canada, the extremes of the season take in a hundred days.

But in a commercial sense the business commences its upward grade on the middle of 17

April, continues to wax and wax till the 10th or 15th of May, and then holds its way on a table-land of perpetual demand and supply till the 20th to 25th of June, when it enters on a down grade, which falls off quite rapidly till the middle of July, when strawberry time is over. Charleston has begun the work of making April a full strawberry month. By another year our receipts from that coast will number thousands of crates. There is more profit in extending the season at this end than from pushing it into July. In April it comes in competition with nothing but the cranberry. In July and the last quarter of June it keeps up a brave contest with the raspberry, with currants, with cherries and Arkansas plums, with early blackberries and with Carolina peaches. Yet it dies game, for well in July such berries, as Dr. Hexamer shows us, will command fifty cents a quart, when the finest raspberries are slow at fifteen. About the first of June there often occurs that curious phenomena, that crisis in demand and supply which the marketmen call a glut.

There are probably 200,000 of our population that eat strawberries about as often as they eat fresh figs, yet while streets and wards full of the poor are languishing and growing sick for want of a varied and generous diet, a pint of berries will sometimes sell on the tip of this island for one cent. The last large glut happened two years ago, on the 8th of June, 1869, and this is the description of it in the language of the market:

"This is the greatest day ever known in the strawberry line, so far as receipts go. The New Jersey Road alone brought in twenty-eight car loads, besides two expressed loads and thousands of crates by boats. Never before were so many berries carried over as remained unsold to-night. Besides the enormous receipts, the weather has been unfavorable. In such a glut the peddler boys usually go in heavy, and help the dealers out, but the showers of to-day interfered with them. Norfolk berries are over. The stock to-day was half Jersey, the other half from Maryland and Delaware. It is impossible to give any fixed quotations, prices varying from twenty cents for fine to ten for medium. The sales of one dealer are a fair sample: thirty-three crates Wilson, hulls on, at twenty, soon after same berry sold at sixteen - then fifteen; then, as they were in danger of going over, ten cents. Yet he carried a stock over. Small baskets of hulled berries, four to a quart, sold at two and three cents, and some at one cent." Yet seven days later we find Extra Wilson's selling at twenty-five cents per quart, and Fancy Jucunda, Barnes and Agriculturist, commanding twenty to twenty-five cents per pint.

So, within a week, we find small berries selling at two cents a pint, and berries such as these worth twenty-five, the former a slow sale and the latter eagerly sought. Sometimes bitter things have been said of the cupidity and heartlessness of hucksters who would throw crates of delicious fruits into New York harbor rather than lower the demand or allow a plethora to have its legitimate effect in forcing down the price. Most of those strictures are unjust. I find the truth of the old saw is perfectly understood on our wharves - The worth of a thing Is what it will bring.

The real cause of a glut is not overproduction; it is large arrivals of fruit unfit for shipment to Northern towns. For instance, two days of moist and hot weather will fling 10,000 crates of Delaware and Jersey berries on our wharves. We can consume 5,000 in the usual course of trade, the other 5,000 should be shipped up the Hudson, on the Fall River line, up Erie and toward Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester, some should go to Portland, and Montreal would appreciate two or three score crates. But the moist, dog-day weather sours the berries, shippers are afraid of them, and leave them in first hands. This creates a glut. In short the producer has two elements in his calculations. He may be sure that he is growing for a consuming population of 10,000,000 an article that every individual of those 10,000,000 likes and is willing to pay him for. On the other hand, his product is in the last degree perishable, and if the weather is bad he cannot reach his consumers with a berry which they will buy at any price.

Some of the largest planters of the strawberry are Virginians. In 1866 Norfolk sent us about 100 orates a week for three weeks. Now Norfolk sends 10,000 orates a week by water, and 8,000 a week by car. The Norfolk berry is mostly Wilson, of medium size, and in gross sales at New York commands twenty cents. This means from fifteen cents to seventeen cents to the grower, and from twenty-five cents to thirty cents from the consumer.

For instance, E. Anderson's account, as shown me by his merchant, runs thus on one shipment: The gross sales were $3,447; on another, the next week, $4,078; next, $5,608; then, $1,101; total, $14,234; in alias gross sales in New York, beside as much more sold in Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia. He has thirty-five acres in strawberries. There are four or five growers near Norfolk that produce about the same as Anderson, and twenty that have from ten to fourteen acres of fruit and a score or more who have from one to three acres.

A review of the strawberry market for 1871, has brought me to these conclusions:

First: The strawberry business is not overdone, and is not in a way to be. The demand races neck and neck beside the supply, and often shows a clear length ahead. The more people eat strawberries the better they like them. Some restaurants consume from 600 to 1,000 quarts daily.

Lastly: There is satisfaction and profit for any small fruit culturist in any part of the country not too remote from cities in growing choice berries. By choice berries we mean large berries. Wilson's, as big as the tip of a lady's finger, will seldom bring the grower above twenty and generally not over fifteen cents a quart. But any quart of firm berries, the smallest of which are as large as the end of a man's thumb, may be sold at from thirty to fifty cents at any time from the middle of April to the middle of July. There is more profit to-day in producing such berries as we are eating to-night than in any other branch of small fruit culture. All the commission men say they would prefer to receive and dispose of 500 crates of extra large rather than 100 crates of mediums.