258 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



men make mistakes. We have some pears now that are different from 

 what we selected; the man came to us, showed his documents, his 

 catalogue, etc., and said that he was agent for a certain company. I gave 

 him an order, knowing the reputation of that house, and when the trees 

 €ame I refused to pay for them, for they were in bad condition. By and 

 by we compromised for a small sum. Those were forged papers that he 

 had shown me. 



Mr. Willard: We have all been there. I was a little interested in 

 what Mr. Watkins had to say. I should assume that the variety of 

 peach of which we spoke was Salway, because they were so late, and 

 that was the condition of the Salway all through the country this year. 

 We usually get big prices for that fruit, but this year they were good for 

 nothing. I can see how mistakes, such as he refers to, might occur, and 

 anyone in the nursery business could understand that. In budding any 

 fruit, the different varieties, there is often a point where two rows are 

 going to stand side by side, two different varieties, and it is the easiest 

 thing in the world, at the time of digging, for a mistake to occur — by acci- 

 dentally getting into the wrong row. They are staked and recorded, of 

 course, and yet the stakes may have been knocked down. He says to 

 himself, ''There are six rows of that variety," whereas there were only 

 five, and he will dig up, unwittingly, a different variety from what was 

 intended; mistakes will occur in that way. So far as mixtures are con- 

 cerned, they frequently creep in. A man will get a bill of trees, and 

 there may be several that are not right. As the gentleman says, he can 

 not do everything himself. Any one who has employed labor knows that 

 it is easier to hire muscle than brains. I know of instances where every 

 care was taken, and yet unintentionally there has been, perhaps, one or 

 two or three naturals left in a row. A few months later, a man cutting 

 buds goes in there. He assumes that those are correct, every one of 

 them, and so in cutting those buds, working upon that assumption, he 

 does not study every tree, but lo and behold! he has struck one of those 

 naturals, and before he knows it he has put in fifty or sixty of the 

 mixture. The best peach-grower in the United States has been mixed 

 up in that way. I am not going to mention his name; but he has had his 

 stock mixed up in that way, so that from time to time he and others are 

 forced to go and get something in the way of buds from bearing trees, 

 to straighten up. You say, why not cut all the buds from bearing trees? 

 It is not always the best thing to do, because in doing it you may get 

 blossom buds that won't develop into good trees. You go into someone's 

 peach orchard, to cut buds, and in many cases you get blossom buds, and 

 they are not good. So you may go through with the whole department. 

 Some years ago, when I cut my own buds, I did this: I was cutting buds 

 in pears and cutting between two varieties. It was hot and I was work- 

 ing hard. Some one came along in a carriage, at the end of the row, and 

 said, "I want to see you, Willard. Come here." I turned, and in order 

 to have a few more buds for the boy, I cut some, but by mistake, out of 

 the row opposite. There was a mixture before I knew it. Suppose there 

 were twenty, thirty, forty of those buds that went into the next year's 

 budding. Before you know it, you are all mixed up; and yet those things 

 are constantly occurring, and it needs a great deal of care. 



Mr. Beckford: Now, both of these gentlemen have owned up that 

 mistakes of that kind do occur, and that if I buy an orchard of them I 



