64 - 
industry. My experience is that it is not very easy to awaken such an interest in their 
minds. At present the farmer looks upon his orchard as the most unpréfitable part of 
his farm ; sometimes, indeed, he looks upon it with a certain amount of disgust. He has 
paid for what he supposed was a certain kind of trees, but after a number of years has 
discovered that he did not get what he paid for at all, and that his orchard is filled up 
with a large number of Talman sweets or some even cheaper variety, and, there being no 
sale for those varieties, his orchard is neglected. I am not a protectionist, but I teel so 
keenly in this matter that if I were asked to construct a tariff for this province I would 
have to introduce that principle of protection first of all on fruit trees, on which I would 
place so high a duty that it would strike the nursery jobber, one that would be prohibi- 
tory on his goods. I find that nearly all these so-called nursery jobbers who have been hum- 
bugging the farmers, get their supplies from the other side. I have no fault to find with 
American grown trees, but the nursery jobber will buy his trees where he can get them 
cheapest, and the nurseryman to whom he goes to purchase them, knowing that he is 
responsible to the jobber only, and not to the jobber’s customers, and that he has to put 
these trees in at a very low rate, is not likely to give him his best. As a result the nur- 
sery jobber fills the orchards of our farmers with the very cheapest trees that are to be 
had ; it is as a rule the leavings of the nurseryman’s other customers that find their way 
into the hands of the nursery jobber. Therefore the farmer who buys from the 
nursery jobber runs the risk of getting just whatever the nurseryman has at his 
disposal at the time the jobber sends his order, and owing in a great degree to 
this the experience of the farmer is that seven out of every ten trees are a fail- 
ure. I think that proportion will hold good throughout Canada, for it is based on 
inquiries I made last fall. When I was talking in this strain before the farmers 
in many places, I was fallen foul of by these very agents, and I have had some 
pretty sharp passages at arms with them. Farmers would ask me what nursery- 
man I would recommend. Now that is not a very pleasant question to deal with, but I 
always tell them I am not advertising any nurseryman, and mention the names of one or 
two of our prominent nurseries. Then they want to know how to deal with them to be 
sure of getting the right varieties, and at reasonable prices. In reply to that I recom- 
mend them through their farmers’ institutes to make up lists of what they want in fruit 
trees, and then send their secretary, or some other live man in whom they have confi- 
dence, to deal directly with the nurseryman. By this plan I tell them they can get 25 
per cent. off the regular list prices, which will pay the expense of sending a man to deal 
direct. Another question I am asked is, how they are to know these men who represent 
themselves as nurserymen and not jobbers, and how they can protect themselves. In 
answer I say that when a farmer wants to build a house, barn or stable, he does not wait 
until some carpenter comes along and persuades him he needs such a building and 
takes his order for the material, but he makes up his mind during the winter and begins 
to make inquiries where he can buy the material best and cheapest, and by whom he can 
get the work done most economically, If he will treat the matter of an orchard in the 
same way, and proceed to inquire carefully where he can best get the requisite trees, we 
will hear less complaints of the kind that are so prevalent among those who wait to be 
taken in by the first man who calls on them witha plausible tongue. [ find it necessary 
to take this line in going out among farmers to talk to them of fruit-growing, for they 
have been so persistently humbugged that—although people will tell you they like being 
humbugged—you cannot arouse in them any interest in fruit-growing unless you point 
out some more satisfactory mode of dealing than the one the evils of which they have 
experienced in the past. But the nursery jobber is only one of the humbugs with whom 
we have to deal, for we frequently find humbugs in connection with reliable nurserymen 
among our own countrymen. Some of the regular nurseryman will send out as a sort of 
inducement a ‘‘catchpenny,” as the saying is, and many of these have had the effect of 
souring farmers against the fruit industry. Not many years ago quite a number of Russian 
mulberries were brought into the county of Perth. I felt that the importation was a humbug 
when it first came in. Many persons inquired my views in regard to it, and I would tell 
them I did not know much about it, but would not recommend them to buy It proved 
a regular humbug. The next was the Russian apricot, which in the northern sections o¢ 
