293 TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



The successful horticulturist must possess a scientific, or, nt least, 

 a practical knowledge of the soil and atmosphere, and of those immuta- 

 ble natural laws which govern production ; and he must possess also 

 the art of skillfully applying that knowledge. The necessary scientific 

 portion of his information he may acquire by silent research and diligent 

 study in the seclusion of his library, and for the art, too, he may draw 

 upon the inexhaustible storehouse of the world's experience in the ages 

 gone by; but the art comes mostly out in the sunshine, in the garden 

 and the orchard. One man, in a single season, may not acquire much 

 information ; but the aggregate information acquired by a number of 

 gentlemen, engaged in a similar pursuit and scattered over a wide extent 

 of country, must be something considerable. I know, gentlemen, that 

 you are anxious to be devouring that information, and I am not going to 

 detain you long. 



I have had a little experience myself as a horticulturist, but it is a 

 very little. I learned by experience, more than twenty years ago, that 

 peaches could not be profitably cultivated on the prairies of Stephenson 

 county; and by experience I learned that Chickasaw plums can be cul- 

 tivated very easily indeed, and there is a nut, in my experience wnth the 

 Chickasaw plum, that I would like to have some of you scientific gentle- 

 men crack for me. 



I settled, with my father's family, on the prairies south of this city 

 many years ago, and across one corner of the farm ran a slough, leaving 

 beyond it a few acres of high prairie. When the farm was fenced, the 

 fences were built on the lines of the government subdivisions, and the 

 high prairie broken up, with the exception of the little patch south of the 

 slough. Then we plowed around the outside of the field, to keep the 

 prairie fires from burning up the fences, and that kept the fires from 

 sweeping over the little patch of unbroken prairie included within the 

 inclosure. It soon came up with hazel, crab apple, and plum trees. I 

 pulled up and transplanted several of the little plum trees when only 

 about sixteen inches high, and they soon came into bearing, and proved an 

 excellent variety of the now^ extensively cultivated Chickasaw plum. 

 There was no timber, and no plum trees within miles of that spot; and 

 Avhat I wish of you scientific gentlemen is to tell me how those Chicka- 

 saw plums happened to come up away out on the prairie as soon as the 

 prairie fires were kept down. I have often thought if the prairie fires 

 had been kept down nature would soon have covered our prairies with a 

 luxuriant timber growth. 



I distinctly remember having seen in a geography, which I studied 

 at a district school when a lad, a picture of a North Carolina prairie, 

 with a Rosa Bonheur buffalo careering over it, and while traversing 

 that State with Sherman's troops in 1S65, I wondered what had be- 

 come of the prairies. But, one afternoon, after the officer of my staff 

 and myself had dined with General Means, in Cabarras county, we 

 stepped out on his back porch to enjoy our cigars, when the general, 

 looking out three or four miles over a beautiful valley, over the green 



