TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 257 



It is useless to mention that the nursery business has been much 

 abused, and that the confidence of the people has been seriously tampered 

 with, especially by those following the jobbing trade. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Watkins: I take great pleasure in the opportunity for interview- 

 ing a nurseryman who has made a very frank and candid statement of the 

 condition of the nursery business. What I want to learn is this: In tree 

 planting, which has been extensive about my place, there have by some 

 means gotten into our plantings many spurious trees, and if Mr. Green- 

 ing can explain to me how, among trees coming from first-class nurseries, 

 there can occur these spurious trees, I would like to know. The indig- 

 nation of our people is intense, and they asked me, if I ever had an oppor- 

 tunity, to find out how these trees came in those collections. For 

 instance, one man planted, three years ago, 1,800 trees. He has 500 trees 

 on which the peaches never ripened at all this year. They are all of one 

 kind, and a kind I never saw or heard of. They were cut off in the first 

 frost, half green. How do such things as this occur? 



Mr. Greening: I think that is very easily explained. It occurs through 

 mixtures in the nursery, no doubt; there can be no other way. It is 

 probable that mistakes occur in every nursery; we do not claim that we do 

 not make mistakes; no firm can claim that. Every tree can not be 

 handled by our own hands, and sometimes serious mistakes occur. 



Q. What puzzles me, is how such a variety of fruit ever came into the 

 hands of a nurseryman; of course there might be mistakes in putting 

 them up and handling them, and labeling them, but how that class of 

 peaches was ever introduced into a nursery, is a singular thing. I know 

 the firm that put them out. 



Q. Was the order placed direct? 



A. No, they were bought through an agent. 



Q. And the agent isn't here, is he? 



A. No, but those trees were sold by an agent of the Greening nur- 

 sery at Monroe, having all the documents, and they were apparently 

 shipped from there in that condition. 



Mr. Collar: I had some that were two thirds green; they ripened the 

 year before, but this year they only got about half their growth; it was 

 pretty dry, and it may have been that same variety. 



A Member: I would say that the Salway ripened nicely with us last 

 year, and this year was frozen before it was ripe. We had a severe 

 frost at a much earlier date than last year. Those things will occur with 

 the late varieties. The latter part of the season was dry. Of course the 

 early peaches ripened nicely, had some rains to help them on, but Smocks 

 hardly ripened, and the Salways did not ripen at all. It was the dry 

 soil and also the variety. 



Mr. Helme: Some of the older men here know Ward's Late, a white 

 peach, which is hardly as late as Smock, and every year I have had only 

 one tree that ripened well, and this year it never ripened at all ; they grow 

 large but remain green, and stay on the tree until they are frozen. Just 

 so with the Smocks I had. They didn't ripen at all this year. There are 

 some peaches in there on the table now, that were sent from Ohio, that 

 were frozen on the tree. But about these different trees. All nursery- 

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