TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 259 



migM be about as likely to get an orchard of seedlings as anything else. 

 Now, what is my remedy in that case? I buy 500 trees and pay for them, 

 and get 400 seedlings. What am I going to do? They say, ''You bought 

 of an agent." I say, you sent me papers, saying you had received my 

 order, and you get my money; and after all that you turn around and say, 

 "If you had only dealt with me instead of my agent." I want to know if 

 the farming community has no rights in this world which the nursery- 

 man must respect. If ever there was a fraud on top of the earth, it is a 

 nurseryman selling me five hundred trees, four hundred of them 

 being worthless. After years, when the fruit ripens, I find that a man 

 with a hammer couldn't get the peaches off the stones. A man couldn't 

 eat one of them in a week. I know what I am talking about; I have some 

 of them; I am in the same boat, and know all about it. If this gentleman 

 can go into an orchard, or into my orchard today, and tell me which of 

 those trees are seedlings and which are not, so I can go in there and pull 

 out the seedlings and start in the spring anew, I wish he would do it. 

 Mr. Willard : Any nurseryman can do that. 



Q. Well, of they can tell the seedlings in my orchard, and utterly 

 refuse to come and tell me, what kind of men are they ? 



Mr. Willard : You will have to decide that. I think I stated that case 

 quite clearly — the extreme care taken by nurserymen, to root out these 

 seedlings. I know it is done. The gentleman is not quite fair in taking 

 me up on one point. I don't undertake to say that you would get a whole 

 orchard, but there are those little mixtures that will occur. If the gen- 

 tleman has bought of Mr. Greening, or Mr. Harrison, or myself, a bill of 

 trees, and they do not prove to be correct, he has his reclamation. I don't 

 know of any instances to the contrary. You have a just reclamation on 

 anyone that has in any way deceived you in regard to that thing. 



Mr. Beckf ord : They say, "Here is what you signed, and if those trees 

 should not prove good, we will replace them ; that is the contract." 



Mr. Willard: That is your contract, then. You make that contract 

 and accept it as a contract. Now ask them to do it. 



Mr. Beckf ord: I wouldn't give a cent to have them send me more 

 trees. 



Mr. Willard : You shouldn't make that contract, then. 

 Q. Is there any possibility that the dry season we have had has 

 made these trees bear clingstone peaches ? 



Mr. Morrill : I have Imown of two or three instances where, under cer- 

 tain conditions of soil and moisture, varieties that are known to be all 

 right, and bearing freelftone peaches, would cling for a season. I think 

 almost every large fruitgrower has seen something of that kind. Some- 

 times certain trees, of a known free variety, will cling, and the next year 

 you can throw the stone out. 



Mr. Beal : When I arose a few moments ago, I had another thing on 

 my mind, but I find some of these questions have been very well disposed 

 of. For instance, the honesty and integrity of the nurserymen; that is, 

 of the proprietors of the nurseries. They have disposed of their matter 

 all right. Mr. Greening agreed that they ought all to get together and 

 see that they do what is just and right, but a slight allusion was made, 

 laying the blame off upon the agent. I don't know what agent is here to 

 answer to that, but I might just as well be a fruit tree agent as any one 



