162 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and the consequence a dead tree or a sickly one and no shade, and 

 probably the attempt to create refreshing shade is given over as a bad 

 job. One in pruning must bear in mind that the limbs and leaves are 

 in a manner the lungs of the trees, and in their growth absorb plant 

 food from the atmosphere as well as the roots from mother earth, nor 

 should any substance be applied to the stem or branches that will 

 make them impervious to air or water, for that closes the pores of the 

 bark and causes as much injury to the tree as closing the pores of the 

 human skin, nor in a rash moment daub your trees with coal or gas tar, 

 for wherever applied it will kill the bark down to the stem, and acts 

 on the bark line a blistering plaster on human skin, only worse, for it 

 never heals up ; neither should pine tar bo applied unless well mixed 

 with soap to keep it from sticking. Nor listen to syren song of fertil- 

 izing trees with stone coal ashes, for I tried that once, seeing a flam- 

 ing advertisement going around. the papers of their great fertilizing 

 power, and they killed some twenty-five fine budded peach trees for 

 which I paid my friend, the nurseryman, fifty cents apiece, and have 

 learned that others have enjoyed similar experiences in acquiring the 

 knowledge of that one fact, that coal ashes will fertilize trees out of 

 exi?tence. 



Lastly, he who would be successful in fruit raising must ever be 

 on the slert to make all the best possible use of his power of observa- 

 tion. He must be ready for any emergency; too, he must bear in 

 mind that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and eternal vigal- 

 ance all manner of insect depredations, climatic changes that wrecks 

 his hopes in the price'of horticultural success. He, too, must be imbued 

 with a love and zeal for fruit culture that is born of a faith almost akin 

 in depth and ferver to the reverence for Deity, whilst the many fluct- 

 uations and changes, accompanied with serious drawbacks that tend to 

 moderate his ardor or to check his enthusiasm in the pursuit he loves so 

 well, yet he derives more genuine heartfelt satisfaction in eliminating 

 from the soil of mother earth by his own good will and industry the 

 choicest blessing of all God's great beneficences, luscious fruits, for the 

 benefit of himself and his fellow-men, than the sordid miser in adding 

 heaps of his golden hoards, and verily I believe as firmly as anyone 

 can that our old friend Hopkius, of Kansas City, and Jacob Faith, of 

 Montevallo, enjoy more heartfelt, soul-stirring satisfaction from their 

 berry patches than W. H. Vanderbilt does from all his ill gotten mil- 

 lions, for indeed there is an indescribable pleasure and gratification in 

 successful fruit culture, that money cannot buy and none can know un- 

 less they have undergone its purifying sensation. 



