1856.] Osage Orange Report Reviewed. 369 



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Col. Harris : — In your last number, (July 1st.,) you copy what 

 purports to be a report of a committee of the " Cincinnati Horticultural 

 Society/' on the condition of the Osage Orange Hedges in this vicinity, 

 preceded by some remarks over the initials M. B. B., approving its 

 sentiments. 



Were it not for some palpable misrepresentations of facts in the 

 report with the above endorsement, I should not deem it worthy of 

 farther notice, as it has here, the place of its birth, been sufficiently 

 exposed. The report is a drive at Spring Grove hedge, those 

 having charge of it, and nothing else, the cause for which it is not 

 necessary to trouble you or your readers. The public want facts, it 

 has no interest in personal bickering. 



From the commencement of this hedge to the present time, there has 

 been much speculation about its success, and its finally answering the 

 objects of its creation. Much criticism has been bestowed upon it, and this 

 not unfrequently by those who are intelligent and entitled to the public 

 confidence in such matters, well calculated to produce doubts and anxiety 

 as to the issue in the mind of the party charged with the direction and 

 care of it. Time, however, expelled these doubts, and gave place to 

 entire confidence in its success, by two years' exposure of a large part 

 of it to hogs, pigs, and other animals, some of it on a public highway, 

 without a single break through it during this time. The unparalleled 

 hard freezing of last winter created just alarm for the safety of this 

 and other hedging in our vicinity. It was evident that in many instan- 

 ces the laterals were destroyed by the frost, and the appearance of the 

 body of many of the plants was anything but encouraging. The writer 

 was free to state this at the meetings of the Horticultural Society. 

 The event has since proven a wonderful power in vegetable force to rid 

 itself of the injury thus sustained. While large numbers of the late- 

 rals have dried up, the body of the plant has thrown oflF the injury, 

 resumed its active and healthy growth in the reproduction of an abun- 

 dance of new laterals, to take the place of the dead ones. And at 

 the time the report of the committee was made, it was in the most 

 vigorous and beautiful growth ; so much so, that the first spring dress- 

 ing had necessarily been completed. 



However, the fears which I had expressed of the winter's freezing, 

 was made the occasion of the gratuitous declaration, that " the most 

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