70 STATE HORTICULTURAL. SOCIETY. 



cruel. The Brahmin, who eats no meat, is sympathetic, kind, and spirit- 

 ual. Mankind, in its evolution toward the highest, will use more fruit and 

 grain and less liquor, tobacco, and meat. It is a known fact that the habitual 

 use of stimulants and narcotics destroys the taste for fruit. This alone is 

 a conclusive argument against the use of stimulants and narcotics. Who 

 does not call to mind the fruit eaten in- childhood ? I remember well the 

 early days of Michigan, when apples were exceedingly rare and pumpkin 

 sauce was plenty. How often, in the late months of February and March, 

 I have explored the cellar for the last decayed survivor of the apple crop! 

 and I declare to you that the finest specimen now exhibited at our fairs 

 falls far below in flavor those fragments that my childish tongue fed upon. 

 Alas! the fault is not in the apple — my taste has degenerated. 



But, in another sense, fruit culture is ennobling. The orchardist culti- 

 vates a friendship for his trees which is reflected in his own character. 

 He plants them with his own hands. He watches their growth from year 

 to year, remembers their age as he does those of his children. He knows 

 their history, remembers the date and character of the budding and graft- 

 ing, the year they began to bear, their dessert and keeping qualities, 

 their relative standing in the market, and the difference in size and 

 flavor between the same fruits raised in New York and raised in Mich- 

 igan. And he delights to recount these facts to his friends and visitors. 



I am indebted to a newspaper article for the following bit of history: 

 On an orchard ranch, two thousand five hundred feet above the sea and 

 sixty miles from the Pacific coast, lives a retired physician, spending the 

 remainder of his days among the flowers, plants, and trees of his own 

 planting. Showing a stranger through his orchard one day, he stopped 

 by a French prune tree loaded with fruit, its first bearing. "This," said 

 he, "is a very choice variety. It was selected by my son and by him 

 budded into a plum tree only three years ago. He was anxious to know 

 the result, but, poor boy! he died of hereditary consumption last year, 

 and at his request we buried him on yonder knolJ, overlooking the orchard 

 in which he took so much interest." 



Thus the tree-planter breathes the fragrance of the blossoms of his 

 trees, gathers the autumn harvest from their branches, rejoices in their 

 growth, entwines their history with the memory of friends and home, and 

 lives and breathes in the very atmosphere of their fragrance and beauty. 



Beforce concluding I wish to recommend the practice of planting fruit 

 trees along the roadside and fences. This practice has long prevailed in 

 Germany, and to some extent in England, and in our own Atlantic states. 

 It has the merit of utilizing space which otherwise would be wasted. 

 Many fruit trees are decidedly ornamental, especially the cherry and hick- 

 ory nut, and thus the highways would be made more attractive and the 

 farms beautified. But there is another consideration which should appeal 

 to every land owner, and that is the blessing that would be thus conferred 

 upon the wayfarer and stranger and those neighbors who are too poor to 

 own orchards, in the gratuitous supply of fruits. And again, the cruel 

 barbed wire, whose treacherous wire-dogs often lacerate like the fangs of 

 a serpent, could be safely shielded in a beautiful hedge of blackberries, 

 currants, or grapes, guarding at once from danger and supplying an added 

 dish to the poor man's table. To be sure, such trees and plants would lack 

 the order and care of a regular orchard, but I can not doubt that the reg- 

 ular orchard would gain many compliments by the contrast that would 



