134 Appendix. 



down under a heavy load of fruit or from our occasional heavy sleets. 

 This has not proven true — only a suspicious foreboding. Under a heavy 

 weight of fruit and in two heavy sleets the union of the graft, to the 

 contrary, has proven to be as strong as any part of the tree, and it has 

 transpired that this top-grafting is not so difficult and mysterious a 

 handicraft as is generally supposed. Any careful, painstaking man 

 can, in a few hours, learn to set a graft; and so with the waxing, etc, 

 A sharp grafting knife, a trimming saw, a package of cotton batting, a 

 waxing brush, and a heating appliance with kettle of grafting wax, is 

 all the equipment required. For wax, linseed oil, and resin, heated and 

 mixed to a right consistence (which is a matter of a little common 

 sense experience.) A man who could not learn to top-graft in a day 

 or tvvfo of experience I should not consider an orchardist or fit to work 

 in an orchard. 



My grafting has been done in March, April, and May, sometimes 

 even after trees were in bloom and leaf. Scions cut in January or 

 February, tied in bunches and set (cut ends down) in loose earth on 

 the north side of a building, under shed, have always kept well. 



Now it transpires that Eastei'n Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, 

 British Columbia, and other localities, grow successfully the Italian 

 prune, and could probably supply the market of the United States. 

 California set great areas of French prunes, and overdid the business, 

 as Californians are apt to do. Probably California, in the near future, 

 will produce more prunes than the world now consumes. For these and 

 other reasons prunes annually dropped in prices from 12 1/^ to 4 cents, 

 and 3^/^ cents, the present offering. This year the four sizes of French 

 prunes are held at 2% cents base, and slow movement. California is in 

 the hands of a combine, even at these prices, and the Eastern market 

 proposes to hold off and break the combine and get prunes yet lower. 

 The few prunes that are sold now are sold outside the combine at 

 lower figures. Canned goods and green fruits are taking the place of 

 the prune. It remains to be seen whether the combine will hold or 

 break. To hold possibly means that the opportunity to sell will be lost 

 and stock held over. To say the least, the condition is not encouraging. 

 The trade calls for a large black prune. The French prune grown in 

 Oregon is small and light colored and can not compete with the larger 

 dark French prune grown in the Santa Clara Valley, not to speak of 

 their advantage in sun-drying. I have one thousand five hundred 

 twelVe-year-oId French prune trees yet to work over; am growing wood 

 of the Burbank sugar prune for scions. California is setting and top- 

 grafting into this prune extensively. Everything is claimed for it. 

 "Three weeks earlier than the French, much larger, sweeter, drying- 

 forty-five pounds to the hundred; ever bearing enormously; tree vigor- 

 ous; free from blight or disease of any kind," etc. 



In 1872 set thi-ee hundred Royal Ann cherries, three hundred Black 

 Republican, and later, four hundred Bing, seventy-five Lambert, sixty 

 Governor Wood, fifty May Duke, and one hundred Early Richmond j 



