WINTER MEETING. 127 



invested for the business. They will tell you that tree-borers, before they do their 

 harm, are small things to find, and that it takes stooping to conquer them, and 

 that you will need certain kinds of birds to help you. 



In fact, Mr. Jones, your icouncil of neighbors will be so well impressed and 

 pleased with you here, that they may take a little impromptu recess to congratulate 

 you for being a close observer in the field of nature, a reader of God's truest and 

 unquestioned word. 



Then will come practical question number 



4. Mr. Jones, have you noticed any difference between the looks of apple- 

 trees and their fruit of the same varieties in different localities? If you have, 

 they will congratulate you on the probability of dodging a serious blunder that 

 likely most of them have made themselves. A.nd they will advise you to sell your 

 rich, loose prairie land in the open country to some corn-raiser, and buy "thin," 

 white-oak ridge land — even cheap railroad-tie land— and clear it up, blowing out 

 and tearing away the stumps clean, and plant some apple-trees on virgin clay soil. 

 They will invite you out and around to see that such soil will, when well located, pro- 

 duce the hardiest trees, the surest crops, the best colored and best flavored fruit, 

 and the most of it. 



By this time the apple council will be curious to hear how much you "already 

 know" about the proposed business, in which you have never had practical experi- 

 ence. And as you eagerly and confidently relate it, you will notice them shrug 

 their shoulders and slyly wink at each other. And by their half-suppressed smiles 

 and broad grins you will measure the amount you will have to unlearn at the start 

 and as you proceed in apple orcharding. 



But back onto natural qualifications they will ask you question number 



5. Mr. Jones, is your standard of personal industry down to that of the 

 average, general, common farmer? If so, the council will, after all, declare your 

 case "off " at last ; for it must be above that in horticulture, where you will have 

 frantic winds, ana hiding borers, and possuming curculio, and ingenious caterpil- 

 lars, and beautiful codling moths, and mysterious fungi, and twig-blight, and leaf- 

 curl, and fruit-scab, and root-rot, and ten times more enemies and drawbacks to 

 watch and fight by midday and moonshine, on week-day and Sunday, from the 

 1st of January till the 31st of December. 



But, Mr. Jones, if you have watched the inseets and birds at their vocations, 

 and observed the noxious weeds grow in sunshine and shadow, by night and day, 

 and in wet and in drouth, you have, as before stated , learned useful lessons of in- 

 dustry from Nature's schooling. 



But, Mr. Jones, in this examination you have still the worst ordeal to pass ; 

 and here the prosecuting attorney will get in his fatal work, I fear. 



Question 6. Mr. Jones, are you a man of careless and neglectful habits? 



If you plead "guilty" or answer evasively the committee will "rise" and leave 

 *'in8tanter" in disgust and swear their time and pains all lost, and leave you alone 

 to reflect over the certain fact that if every other qualification was good, careless- 

 ness and negligence would rule you clear out of every branch of the orchard busi- 

 ness. 



But if you can sustain "not guilty," they will ballot you into the club and 

 give you advice, in addition to former suggestions, something like the following : 



First : Determine what you want to raise an orchard for — for speculation or 

 for the fruit for yourself. I speak of speculation, for I know of no line of agricul- 

 tural industry that promises greater profits, with more certainty, than raising 

 apple orchards to sell, as such, from five to six years of age, or older. 



