84 ' REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE 



LACK OF INFORMATION. 



A very large proportion of those planting orchards have not 

 experience enough to enable them to decide which sorts belong 

 to the first grade, and which to the lower grades. Knowing 

 this, they are naturally led to apply for thie information to 

 some source which they deem authentic. There are but few 

 experienced fruit-growers to whom a person in need of such 

 information might apply, but that would have a favorite list 

 to recommend. There are, perhaps, as few who would furnish 

 a list that might correspond with another list from another 

 source. In consequence, the matter, to say the least, becomes 

 somewhat mixed in the mind of the planter, who oftentimes, 

 in despair, makes a list composed of each kind that has been 

 recommended, feeling reasonably sure that some of it will be 

 right at all events, and sends this order to the nurseryman to 

 fill. The damage arising from this method of commencing — 

 which is not by any means unusual — is much greater than 

 would appear, at the first glance, possible, and an evil, gentle- 

 men, which needs your earnest efforts to overcome; and I shall 

 occupy a brief space upon the magnitude of this point, as I 

 believe it has great force in this connection. 



Allowing that four-fifths of the list that is furnished the 

 nurseryman to fill, is composed of the second, third, or fourth 

 grade fruits, then we find, when the orchard bears, that tho 

 owner has a great variety of fruit which never attracts the 

 market-man, in consequence of which his fruit obliges him to 

 find a home market by peddling it out from his wagon by the 

 bushel or peck, or in some equally perplexing manner dispose 

 of it for the best price offered, until, instead of the anticipated 

 pleasure in handling the products of his orchard, it becomes a 

 dread and a perplexity. What wonder is it, then, that so 

 many orchards are neglected, and, by that neglect, what won- 

 der that so many trees are diseased, and become the rendezvous 

 of the thousand and one beetles, bugs, and borers ? But not 

 here does the result of this wrong commencement stop. The 



