so STATE HOKTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



for the production of foliage and fruic, and rescuing tiieni from otherwise 

 inevitable death. Let us for a moment contemplate the not infrequent attempt 

 to ignore tlie fact that nature has, in some sense, devised a 6iX3cial la\r, obedi- 

 ence to -which is essential to the highest success and most comjlleto develop- 

 ment of each family of plants, and the tendency of man to apply his own 

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

 ened the more rampant shoots of his peacli trees with satisfactory result, and 

 having, with the practiced eye of an artist, brought them to the approved form, 

 jiroceeds next to bring iiis pear trees, and anon the apple also, into the same 

 favorite rut; only to learn, possibly after years of misdirected effort, that with 

 some varieties of these fruits, while his trees may bocomo assimilated in form 

 to the desired model, the process involves the removal in whole or in part, of 

 the possibility of fruit. 



Done with these, he wends his way to the small fruit plantation, and deftly 

 licks his raspbcry and blackbery plants into a satisfactory form, and nature 

 says yes, this will do. Emboldened by success ho next attacks the currants 

 and gooseberries, whereupon Damo Nature compromises the matter with 

 decided indications by perhaps giving him large and beautiful fruit, but very 

 little of it. 



But the afflatus is still strong upon him and impels liim next to the lawn, 

 where, in the working out of his model upon the shrubbery he is ultimately made 

 to comprehend that shrubs blooming from the last season's wood yield but a 

 partial and dissatisfied assent to the application of his strait-jacket, which 

 despoils them of very much of tlieir incipient bloom, wliile most of the spira?as, 

 witli many other plants of similar Jiabit, can only be shortened or slieared 

 with the entire loss of the season's bloom. In certain pursuits involving a 

 division of labor, an operative, by continuous manipulation of a single pro- 

 cess, may become so expert that tliought ceases to be a necessity ; the deeply 

 worn rut comes to be an unerring guide. Unfortunately, doubtless, for the 

 perfection of the manipulations, but fortunately for the mental status of the 

 operative, in horticultural pursuits this condition of affairs very rarely becomes 

 possible. On the other hand, in this specialty wo have to do with trees aud 

 plants brought togetlier from dissimihar climates, and from varying conditions 

 even of the same climate, all of which particulars must be studied, both sep- 

 arately and associated, in the case of each class of plants before we can surely 

 determine tlio rut in which it will most surely and fully resjiond to our efforts, 

 while the neglect of any of these essentially modifying particulars will quite 

 possibly, as with the considerate artist who selected a grazing cow as the stand- 

 point for a picture, find his plans thrown into confusion aud his work a failure. 

 Besides the agricultural ruts of which wo have already spoken, horticulture 

 seems to be essentially complicated with other ruts almost innumerable, some 

 of which may be designated as botanical ruts, by the study of wliich we 

 might, perchance, become wise enough to determine whether the pulp or the 

 pit of the peach is the fruit; whether tomatoes, potatoes, melons, and pump- 

 kins are in fact vegetables or fruits; and even to discover the true reason why 

 the fabled pumpkins did not grow on the oak. In one of these ruts we might, 

 if only blessed with the requisite acuteness of vision, follow in the track of 

 Prof. Burrill, and be able to finally and authoritatively determine the ques- 

 tion whctlier bacteria arc really vegetables or insects, and whether they are 

 the actual cause or only a concomitant of blight and yellows. Lastly, though 

 by no means least, iiorticulture is complicated with entomological ruts. Iii 

 the study of these some very acute plant-grower might be able to win the 



