264 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



planting and fruit growing. We are obliged to adopt exotics to 

 get our finest and most wholesome stone fruits. That peerless 

 fruit, the peach, is an exotic. Therefore we must study its habits. 

 As we know it cannot endure very severe cold, we must in some way 

 protect it from the wintry blast. 



It must be sheltered from the blizzards of Boreas and the 

 frosts of Zero. If some sheltered nook, suitable in soil, eleva- 

 tion and freedom from water, cannot be found, then resort to 

 root pruning and gently bend the tree to earth and fasten it 

 there until April with gentle winds and showers assures you that 

 both Boreas and Zero are conquered, and not to be feared for 

 the next nine months. This is practicable. I have tried it suc- 

 cessfully for the last three years. 



The plum is indigenous, and may be relied on to give fruit, 

 with proper clean culture, but must have society, companions of 

 like nature and similar habits. 



Dame nature plants her plums in clumps . ' ' The plum thicket' ' 

 is a familiar childhood phrase. When man attempts to advise 

 or thwart nature, he is sure to make a failure. " Experience," 

 says Poor Richard, " keeps a dear school," but most of us have 

 to graduate in her college. Plant a single tree? Never. A 

 clump, all of one variety? No. Varieties will aid each other 

 in fertilization. What is necessary for the peach and plum is 

 also for the Apricot, which the great botanist Linneus thinks to 

 be a sport of the plum or JPrunus Americana. But what of the 

 Russian Apricot and Prunus Simoniaf 



Treat them and all foreigners, (exotics) with all courtesy, care 

 and generosity, but put your faith and works (for faith without 

 works is dead) upon your immediate friends, the indigene. 



ENEMIES. 



On Monday of the present week I visited the grounds of a 

 most practical horticulturist. He lives in a very modest style, 

 some five or six miles from my residence. A quiet man with a 

 very breezy name. Pointing to a Wild Goose plum tree, said he, 

 "I shall have plums this year. Clean culture, and plenty of 

 wood ashes will fix the little Turk." This is really a remedy 

 easily applied. You know he (the little Turk) is a very modest 

 fellow. He would rather not be introduced to the proprietor of 

 the orchard. Jar the tree. He hides his face and long snout 

 under his belly, and drops to the ground where your poultry and 

 pigs may find him, and by scattering shelled corn under your 

 trees, and repeating the process every day for a few weeks you 

 may rely upon fruit. Don't be too modest in your work. Shake 

 off every plum that you can, and you will be delighted to see the 

 hogs devour them. They seem to take them as an appetizer. 



A digression just here will, I trust, be pardoned. I never was 

 an admirer of swine, and yet must argue with a celebrated 



