REPORTS OF LOCAL SOCIETIES. 377 



■ Never hire a man to prune your trees unless you know he is very 

 good at that business, or unless he comes to you with the most posi- 

 tive recommendations from men that you know to be experienced and 

 successful orchardisls. Better turn a bull loose in a china shop. 



GREENE COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE LAST MONTH OF WINTER. 



[An essay read before the Greene County Horticultural Society, 

 February G, 1886.] 



As horticulturists, workers, tillers of the soil, we have by this time 

 in our experience learned that every division of time has its value, 

 every season its opportunities and utility. Together with the natural 

 division of four seasons in every year there are many subdivisions, 

 quaintly denominated busy season, leisure season, idle season, etc. 

 The last is a misnomer, and by every horticulturist should be stricken 

 out. That spring, summer and autumn are all busy seasons is a fact, 

 busy al], heads, hands, implements and animals, planting, tilling, har- 

 vesting and marketing. The very seeds we sow and the soil are busy, 

 our plants, vines and trees, growing, blooming and fruiting are beauti- 

 fully busy. Summer's tillage and autumn's harvest ended and the 

 fruits of our efforts stored, harness, implements and animals go into 

 winter quarters for a rest. The we^ry acres of hard worked soil need 

 a rest also and now get it. It is good that Jack Frost should bid vege- 

 tation halt and that stern cold winter should command that we cease 

 to toil and that our physical machinery take a rest. The price of winter 

 may be estimated by the value of recuperation which this three months 

 of comparative inactivity secures to our soil and to our muscular pow- 

 ers. Winter has still other utilities. 



While I was a farmer boy at home with my father I plowed in 



