STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 73 
the reasons of horticultural failures to judge the disheartening results by the 
inevitable law of cause and effect, to be able to grow fruit with the same surety 
as potatoes and wheat, with half the labor, double the profit and minus the 
kind offices of the Colorado beetle or the festive grasshopper. Believing this, 
we would wish to consider the subject fairly, painting with no high colors, or 
false shadings, but, to throw, if possible, some light on this vexed question. 
We hardly exaggerate when we say, that in Minnesota more money has been ex- 
pended with less returns for nursery stock than for any other commodity—al- 
Ways excepting whiskey and lightning rods. A visit to almost any community 
will verify this statement. Numerous instances of people who have bought lib- 
erally, have nothing to show for their investments. The largest number of 
these, (thus duped, taken in, swindled and done for by some mercenary tree 
peddler, as they suppose,) is not confined to the classes one would naturally ex- 
pect; asa rule, the wealthiest, most cultivated citizens are the greatest sufferers. 
The question, why this need be so, will be answered later. Do not draw the false 
inference that the planting of fruit and ornamental trees is always attended 
with failure. On the coutrary, one need but to stroll over this enterprising 
city, and see with pleasure many lawns made attractive by evergreens, always 
beautiful, whether in fine summer contrast, with brilliant flowers, or draped with 
winter’s garlands of fleecy snow; fine shade trees, thrifty fruit trees and tasteful 
shrubbery, to know that some have found the way to safely plant, and if some, 
we dare assert that all may do the same, feeling sure they will be rewarded for 
time and pains. Intelligent efforts expended im transplanting nursery stock will 
be successful. This is no chance game, no chimera, it is simply following the 
laws of nature. If these laws of nature are comprehended and obeyed in the 
setting out and caring for an apple tree of the proper variety, we do not think 
perhaps it may live, perhaps it may bear fruit we know it will, just as surely as 
if already each bough was heavily laden with golden crimson fruit,temptingly 
gleaming through the glossy leaves. It is a natural sequence; is as sure as two 
and two equals four. 
We know if one takes a human plant, cramp it, starve it, rob it of water and 
sunshine, it will surely waste away and die; common sense and reason teach us 
that the same result and law apply to the tree or plant. If starved, cramped 
and kept from suushine, it must die, or at best lead a sickly, struggling exist- 
ence, ‘‘ a blot upon the fair face of nature.” 
Let us review a little the history of horticulture in the past, in search of a 
reason for the so-called ‘‘bad luck,”’ that, like an evil fate, has so persistently 
followed the effort of the tree-planter in this highly-favored State, until the very 
name of a tree agent is held in odium. We will assume that the early settler 
of thirty years ago little dreamed of the importance Minnesota was one day to at- 
tain; before him like a poem was spread the fair land, with its rock-crowned hills, 
protecting fertile valleys, through which wound crystal trout brooks, while clear 
limpid springs gushed from the rocks, spangling with dew the fragile fern; even 
the grass was greener and sweeter, and the air fuller of ozone, the skies bluer 
and more cloudless than in other lands; he doubtless felt it a joy to live, but 
could have had no comprehensive idea of the possibilities locked in reserve 
awaiting the key of development. 
Soon experiment in agriculture showed so rich returns that a wonderful im- 
petus was given to emigration. Men from the east, tired ot enclosing tiny fields 
with stone walls, and whittling out nutmegs for diversion; men from the south, 
