Horticulture vs. Rats. 14^ 



Let us tor a moment contemplate the not infrequent attempt to ignore the 

 fact that nature has, in some sense, devised a special law, obedience to which 

 is essential to the highest success and the most i:)erfect development of each 

 family of plants; and the tendency of man, on the other hand, to apply his 

 own Procustean ideas alike to all. An assumed expert of this school, having 

 devised a model to which he would conform the growth of his trees, short- 

 ens the growth of his peach trees; and, with the eye of an artist, brings them 

 to the form of the model. Satisfied with the result in their case, he pro- 

 ceeds next to bring his pear trees, and anon the apples also into the same 

 favorite rut: only to learn, jiossibly after years of misdirected eflibrt, that 

 with some varieties of these fruits, at least, while his trees may become as- 

 similated, in form, to the chosen model, the process involves the removal, in 

 whole or in part, of all possibility of fruit. 



Pausing at the vineyards, he shakes his wise head at their raiipant disre- 

 gard of his model, and, in sheer disgust, leaves them to their trellis, the Thrips 

 and the Philloxera; and wends his way to the small fruit plantation, where 

 he deftly licks the raspberry and blackberry plants into satisfactory form,, 

 while nature smiles upon his labor. Emboldened by success, he next attacks 

 the currants and gooseberries; whereupon Dame Nature compromises the 

 matter, with decided indications of disapproval, by perhaps giving him large 

 and beautiful fruit, but very little of it. 



But the afiiatus is still strong upon him, and impels him, next, to the 

 lawn, where, in the working out of his model upon the shruberry, he is ulti- 

 mately made to comi^rehend that trees and plants which bloom from the 

 last season's wood yield but a partial and dissatisfied assent to the application 

 of his straight-jacket, which despoils them of very much of their incipient 

 bloom, while most of the Spireas, with many other plants of corresponding, 

 habit, can only be shortened or sheared, with the entire loss of the season's 

 bloom. 



In certain pursuits involving a division of labor, an operative, by continu- 

 ous manipulation of a single process, may become so expert that thought re- 

 specting it ceases to be a necessity, since the deeply worn rut comes to be an 

 unerring guide. Unfortunately, doubtless, for the perfection of the manip- 

 ulations, but, fortunately for the mental status of the operative, in horticul- 

 tural pursuits, this condition of affairs very rarely becomes possible. On the- 

 other hand, in this specialty, we have to do with trees and plants, brought 

 together from dissimilar climates, and from varying conditions even of the 

 same climate, as well as with dissimilar habits of growth and fruitage, all 

 which particulars must be studied, both separately and associated, in the 

 case of each class of plants, before we can determine the rut in which it will 

 most surely and perfectly respond to our treatment, while the neglect of any 

 of these essentially modifying particulars will, quite po.ssibly, :is with the in- 

 considerate artist, who selected a grazing cow as the standpoint for a picture, 

 cause his plans to fall into confusion, to the ruin of his work. 



Besides the agricultural ruts, of which we have heretofore spoken, horti- 



