34 The Bulletin. 



You cannot afford to order all sorts of fancy fruits with high-sounding 

 names unless you know something ahout the business of fruit culture to 

 begin with. Don't be misled into purchasing every kind of new fruit 

 or variety which the agent may tell you about. Those things should be 

 left for the experienced fruit grower who already knows something about 

 fruits, and who is anxious to try all the new things that come along. It 

 is better to take a few well-known and reliable varieties than to take a 

 large number of varieties which you do not know about. 



Fraudulent Claims. — Every year we hear of new and marvelous kinds 

 of fruits — tree strawberries, frost-proof peaches, seedless grapes, apples 

 without cores and seeds, enormously prolific pears, plums, etc. — trees or 

 plants grafted or budded or grown so as to render them especially profit- 

 able in some way. We advise you to leave all these alone. As a rule 

 they are fakes, pure and simple, or, if they in any degree fulfill the claims 

 made for them, they are likely to be of such inferior quality as to be 

 almost worthless. You shouldn't be misled by a pretty picture in a 

 catalogue. Learn to know the kinds of fruits yourself and then you can 

 place your order with confidence, but it is not well to leave the selection 

 to an unknown agent. If you know the agent and can rely on his recom- 

 mendations, well and good, but an unscrupulous agent will sell you what 

 is most profitable to him, and that is often what is most expensive to you. 

 If any unknown agent tries to sell you some marvelous fruit trees at $1 

 each, or thereabout, leave him alone, for such prices are exorbitant and 

 fraudulent, even for the choicest trees of the choicest varieties. If a 

 reliable nursery offers stock at such high prices it may be for some good 

 reason, but the unknown agent who drifts into your community, takes 

 orders and money and drifts out again is usually a fraud if he sells trees 

 at such a price. There might be a few remarkable exceptions. 



The good, steady, honest fruit-tree agent, who works the same terri- 

 tory year after year, or who returns to the same community from time 

 to time, so that he meets his customers repeatedly, is a decided help to 

 the farmer and amateur fruit grower, for he will usually give him many 

 valuable hints on the care of the trees, etc. It is the mysterious un- 

 known agent of an unknown nursery who offers such remarkable plants 

 that we advise against. Use discretion in placing your order; act on 

 your own knowledge, or the advice of some reliable person known to 

 you, and do not be misled by the talk of an unknown agent. 



LIST OF LARGER FRUIT GROWERS. 



In our correspondence and in the orchard inspection work we have 

 acquired a good list of fruit growers of the State who have as many as 

 100 or more trees of a kind, and for the convenience of those interested 

 we publish the following list of the larger growers. All of these have 

 reported that they have as many as 500 or more of a kind, and we list 

 opposite each name the number of trees of such kinds. They are listed 

 according to the county where the orchard is located, whether the address 

 of the owner is in the same county or not. In a few cases only the num- 

 ber of trees is our estimate and not the grower's statement. 



