The Ideal and the Real in Hoeticultcbe. 223 



bought and lost a plant of the same kind, but he had beaten him 

 two weeks as to time. A few auch trials have a tendency to 

 modify ideas of an ideal garden more in accordance with climate 

 and conditions, but the ideal man generally must be humored in 

 contemplating a garden in its broadest sense, and take in about 

 all the fruits, vegetables and trees of a zone until the great major- 

 ity are eliminated by heat, cold, drouth or soil unadapted to 

 their growth. He reasons also, that his broad views and. 

 the labor expended in a garden should bring an ample return ; 

 but while cultivating the soil, perhaps some detail, absolutely 

 essential to produce satisfactory results, is not attended to at 

 the proper time. Trimming, pruning and thinning may be 

 wholly neglected, the fruit trees become bushy, the vines too 

 tangled, the vegetables too crowded in the rows ; watchfulness 

 may be lax, and before suspected, the worms may be on the cur- 

 rant bushes, the birds among the cherries, the grubworm and 

 leaf-roller in the strawberry plantation, bugs on the potato vines, 

 mildew on the grapes, canker worm and codling moth in the apple 

 trees, curculios on the plums, and the blight on the pear trees. 

 When this state of things exists in a plantation, business distracts 

 the owner; profoundly impressed with the idea that something 

 must be done quickly, he puts hellebore on his currant bushes 

 after the worms have had a prolonged feast; Paris green on the 

 potato vines after they are mostly eaten; cotton bands five inches 

 wide around his apple trees after the moths are up in the branches ; 

 takes them off to hunt these insect , but does not find any, and 

 logically concludes that they have jumped over the bands and 

 loses faith in that remedy; jars his plum trees until the green plums 

 drop freely, but not seeing any curculios, doubts the utility of this 

 operation; empties a barrel of salt around the roots of his pear 

 trees and daubs the trunks and limbs with linseed oil, but the 

 blight progresses. Later he overhauls his agricultural newspaper 

 to read Prof. Burrillon pear blight, looks in his dictionary for the 

 definition of bacteria, mentioned by him as the cause, and begins 

 to doubt whether he has given his pear trees the right treatment. 

 The leaf roller and grub worm have made havoc with the straw- 

 berry crop, and put him to his wits' end to stop it; again he con- 



