> 
28 ANNUAL REPORT. 
the guilty parties or to fix the responsibility of frand in selling trees? This is a 
problem that would be difficult to solve at law. Perhaps it would be better to 
keep an old shot-gun at hand to point out such offenders where the law would 
fail. It is a well-known fact that those tree-dealers, who pretend to represent 
nurseries at a distance, and carrying with them samples of fruits in glass that 
magnify to double the size, and nothing short of the best thing out, do outsell 
our home nurseries at a distance, even at their own doors and obtain better 
prices for the same class of trees. We are in favor of progressive and scientific 
horticulture, of disseminating new and improved varieties of fruits and plants; 
but unless we see such new fruits endorsed by better authority than the tree- 
peddler, we had better stick to the well-tried varieties. We are aware that our 
advice cannot reach the persons whom we desire to benefit and protect for the 
simple reason that they ignore all horticultural experience. Animals or birds of 
different species can mingle and partake of one common nature notwithstanding 
Darwin has attempted to prove that man’s original was a monkey; but as his 
reasoning faculties developed he saw no use for a tail and dropped it. Other 
professors wisely asse.t that the negro is of a different species from the white 
man from the fact, he has not the same number of bones. 
In case the species could be blended together by amalgamation, what be- 
comes of the odd bones? Nature no doubt is willing to accomodate herself if all 
the parts agree. But what would you think of such theories in the practice of 
horticulture? It is evident, 
If such be true, then false are nature’s laws 
And man may<et aside the first great cause ; 
What signifies if even courts ordain 
To unsex a Belmont? Still the sex remain. 
But you inquire from whence come those beautiful flowers that so far eclipse 
the gardens of our youth, when our mothers took us by the hand and led us 
along the well-kept walks, admiring with rapturous delight each opening bud 
and flower. We also remember that something was said in our ears about the 
celestial gardens in the paradise above. Or you inquire how it is that we now 
enjoy the luscious fruits of the vine, while our fathers were privileged to eat 
nothing but sour grapes? Our orchard products too have changed from those 
old astringent sour seedlings, that would now put the blush upon a well-bred 
crab, to the luscious fruit we see piled up in pyramids at our fairs, as if intended 
especially to tempt us, not to steal but to plant. I answer, science has found 
her votaries in nature’s laws. It had been said that he who can make two 
blades of grass grow where only one grew before is a public benefactor. What 
may be said of those who have brought our flowers and fruits up to their present 
standard of beauty and excellence? Whose lives have been spent in the pursuit 
of horticultural knowledge until their heads have become white as the driven 
snow? Some of them still remain with us to carry on their life-work toward 
perfection. while others have been transplanted to amore congenial clime, where 
perpetual spring is decked in regal robes of flowers, and the trees yield their 
fruits every month in the year. Have they not left us an heritage more valu- 
able than the mines of Golconda or the gold of California? And what may we 
yet expect in the developments that will be made in horticultural science when 
nature’s ways are more perfectly understood. 
If | should revert to my first experience in obtaining fruit, it might form a 
good lesson to those who are about to embark in fruit culture. When I came 
