144 Mississippi Volley HorticuUural Society. 



<>iilture seems to be essentially complicated with other ruts, almost innu- 

 merable, one class of which may be designated as botanical ruts, by the care- 

 ful study of which we might, perchance, become expert enough to be able to 

 determine authoritatively whether the ])ulp or the pit of a peach is the fruit — 

 whether tom.itoes, potatoes, melons and pumpkins are, in fact, vegetables or 

 fruits, while it may even be found possible to discover the true reason v.'hy 

 the fabled pumpkin did not grow upon the oak. 



In one of these ruts we might, if only blest with the requisite acuteness of 

 vision and perception, follow in the track of Professor Burrill, and be able to 

 finally and authoritatively determine the question whether bacteria are really 

 vegetables or insects, and whether they are the cause or only a concomitant 

 of blight and yellows. 



Yet another system of ruts, which add greatly to the complications of hor- 

 ticulture, may be denominated entomological ruts, in the study of which 

 some very acute plant-grower might succeed in winning the gratitude of his 

 compeers by the discovery of some means of propagating thrips, phylloxera, 

 red spider and scale insect, short of a resort to his pet plants for the purpose. 

 And if, moreover, our honored President could, after a critical survey of this 

 field, tempt the lachnosterna, the crown-borer and the leaf-roller with forage 

 more to their liking, and, at the same time, more economical than straw- 

 berry plants, there would no longer be a peg on which to hang a doubt of the 

 appropriateness of his recognized title of strawberry king. The orchardist 

 and nurseryman might, doubtless, with equal reason, hope to discover some 

 other pasture so satisfactory to the aphis and his reputed dairyman, the ant, 

 that it would be accepted in place of his trees, to his great relief and gratifi- 

 cation. And if, furthermore, he could succeed in persuading the curculio, 

 and even the codling moth and borer, back into the ruts occupied by them 

 prior to their discovery of the plum and the apple, he might be almost, if not 

 altogether, prepared to hail the advent of the millennium of horticulture, 

 though he will hardly be able to felicitate himself upon the actual arrival of 

 that much-to-be-desired era, till (after investigating the ruts of commerce) 

 lie shall discover a way to turn out a thoroughly honest package from the 

 faced ones which reach our markets through the back door, minus a spon- 

 sor, and seem to serve, most appropriately, as a bait to catch gudgeons, who 

 may be ready to bite at an ajjparent ott'er of something for nothing, and un- 

 til he shall find himself able to measure out a full quart from a one and a half 

 pint box, and an honest peck from a six quart basket. These accomplished, 

 he will need, next, to provide the inevitable tree peddler a school in which 

 he may be taught how to realize the many wonderful facts which now find 

 an existence only in his fertile brain ; and in such school there might be a 

 department in which the sanguine and ambitious originator and dissemina- 

 tor of novelties may learn just how far he may venture to impose his wares 

 upon a credulous public without endangering his reputation for honesty, and 

 even how the nurseryman may most effectively conduct a paper at the ex- 

 pense of the public, to be used in " blowing his own horn '" and in belittling his 

 rivals. 



