194 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



the State it would be difficult to persuade an orchardist that it is not by far the best. 

 •My own experience has shown the same results. We must always bear in mind the 

 effects of soil and climate, and not lay down as a general law what may accidently suit 

 one particular locality. 



If the Mahaleb is equally productive as a stock, it has advantages over the Morello, 

 on account of cheapness, and the absence of suckers, which are in many cases object- 

 ionable. Thus far, the cherry is free from the black knot, which is so destructive to 

 it at the east. 



AT PRINCETON 

 is another point of interest to the cultivator of fruit, for it is the home of the Bryants, 

 brothers of the poet, and beautiful poetry have they woven into the prose of every day 

 life ; homesteads, around which cluster the useful and the beautiful, fields and orchards, 

 lawns and gardens, where spring unfolds her mantle ; and where summer marches 

 down through pleasant scenes, to where autumn stands, crowned with the products of 

 educated labor, rich soils and genial skies. 



Long avenues of the sugar maple (acer nigrum), old orchards, the open woodland car- 

 peted with blue grass, made musical with tinkling sheep bells and bleating lambs, the 

 fields of meadow and small grain that stretch out into the open prairie, make up a pic- 

 ture beautiful in the summer sun, and robed in the green drapery, yet unmixed with 

 ripening harvests. Under the canopy of the primeval forests, the symmetrical maples, or 

 the bending orchard, the hours flew on, the note book was dropped — converse on the 

 early days, the progress of pomology — dinner — a game of croquet on the smooth sha- 

 ven lawn — tea — and then the shades of evening compelled the committee to depart — 

 down through the gulches that send their flanking spurs of river, forest and out into the 

 prairie — down into the very valley of the Illinois, to await the train that shall take us 

 onward. The notes of the day — well we did not take them — but we have a pleasant 

 recollection of the beatiful village of Princeton, its magnificent public schools, its shady 

 streets and pleasant residences ; of Bubach's well kept nursery and garden of small fruits; 

 the Bryants' — well, taken all together, it was a pleasant, a very pleasant day, even with 

 out the notes. 



A BARNACLE. 



In the morning, the committee left the Junction for Lacon, but the company were 

 joined by one of those persons who live on the ignorance of the fruit-grower, a sort of 

 barnacle that fastens on the labor of others. This man was full of horticultural know- 

 ledge, was versed in fruit organs and sap organs, could feel the pulsations of vegetable 

 life, and had fathomed the mysteries of the circulation, could produce fruit at will, and 

 kill the insect who dared set his unhallowed foot on the top-most apple in the highest 

 tree, simply by driving a nail, saturated with a secret poison, into the fruit or sap organ 

 of the tree, when lo ! the subtle fluid strikes the intruder dead, and his corpus would 

 fall to the earth. Dr. Hull suggested that the iron from the nail was taken up in the 

 circulation, and the insect sucking it up in the juices, the weight of iron brought him 

 to the ground ; but our barnacle scouted the idea with indignation, and flatly refused to 

 hold conversation with him. He had studied the habits of insects. The curculio crawled 

 up the tree a wriggling worm, and crowded into the fruit ; but he could not pass the 

 magic circle made by the nails, no more than a witch could a threshold guarded by a 

 horse-shoe. 



