§:2 



THE MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT TREES, &c. 



REVIEWS. 



A PRACTICAL TREATISE O.V THE MANAGEMENT OF 



Fruit Trees, ada^itud to the interior of New- 

 England. By George Jaques. Worcester, 

 184D. 



No better proof is needed of the increas- 

 ing taste for horticulture, than the produc- 

 tion of little volumes like this, int-jnded for 

 particular districts of country ; for it is suf- 

 ficiently evident that if fruit trees were not 

 now pi'ttty extensively planted and grown 

 in the " interior of New-England," neither 

 authors nor publishers would be tempted to 

 produce works thus adapted to especial 

 localities. 



Every one, however, who is conversant 

 with fruit tree culture, knows that while 

 there are many truths of universal applica- 

 tion, there are also many others which have 

 a purely local value ; and hence the utility 

 of works of this character. 



Mr. Jaques has, we think, peformed his 

 task well, and aiming only to produce a 

 useful manual for the New-England fruit- 

 growers, has collected many valuable facts 

 and arranged the whole so as to convey the 

 largest amount of instruction. We recog- 

 nize in the early chapters of the work the 

 same arrangement as in our own larger 

 volume on this subject, and a somewhat 

 similar treatise. But this is probably owing 

 to the difficulty of going over the same 

 ground with the appearance of freshness. 



There is a very good chapter on the 

 " orchard business," which the author thinks 

 a capital investment of money for the land- 

 holder ; and another on the ' ' nursery busi- 

 ness," which he thinks usually a poor one, 

 closing his remarks on this subject with the- 

 following paragraph : 



"The nursery business requires very 



much more skill than ordinary farming, and 

 its profits are far more uncertain. Upon the 

 whole, it is a much better avocation to 

 amuse a rich man's leisure than to replenish 

 a poor man's purse. The reader may rest 

 assured that there is no more satisfactory 

 way of arriving at a realizing sense of the 

 truth of this assertion, than to give the 

 business a thorough trial. For ourselves, 

 we confess that we have fairly and clearly 

 ' seen the elephant ' that eats up the profits 

 of raising or buying fruit trees for sale." 



The descriptive lists of fruits in this 

 manual are small, for the best of reasons, 

 viz : that only a small number of unexcep- 

 tionable fruits can be safely recommended 

 for cultivation in any given locality, and 

 Mr. Jaques appears to have made his se- 

 lections wisely. 



Altogether, this pocket volume of 256 

 pages, is highly creditable to the author, 

 and will we have no doubt be found a 

 very acceptable contribution to the horticul- 

 tural knowledge of the Eastern States di- 

 rectly and indirectly, for novices in fruit" 

 growing the whole country over. 



The American Farm Book, or Compend of 

 American Agriculture. By R. L. Allen. Ne-w- 

 York, 1849. 

 This work was first published two years 

 ago, under the second portion of the above 

 title, and was so favorably received by the 

 public that it has undergone in the present 

 revised edition, considerable improvement, 

 and now makes its appearance under the 

 more popular name of the " American 

 Farm Book," 



Having commended it in very strong 

 terms in a former number of this journal, 



