STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 101 
them long keepers, and all believed by their friends to be hardy and valuable in 
this climate for orchard purposes; other seedlings are being tried and well 
watched, each year new ones being added to the list, and unless some extraor- 
dinary catastrophe soon overtakes these sorts, it seems probable that every 
intelligent farmer who is permanently located is gomg to want trees enough 
within two years from now to make him an orchard to raise apples for profit as 
a farm crop, as they do in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan, where all our 
immense supplies of market apples come from. Seeing this prospect ahead, 
what are the public needs in reference to it, and what should each individual be 
doing tor his own interest? The first need is to supply of good trees of the 
right vorieties. This the nurseries of the State will attend to.- The second is 
an immediate and thorough posting up on the part of the people in the knowl- 
edge of the progress of Horticulture generally, but more especially in regard to 
the selection and care of fruit trees. Our young men are nearly all ignorant on 
this subject, and what is worse they do not at present 1ealize that they need to 
learn; for the common idea is that it is cheaper to buy fruit than to raise it. 
Our old men are mostly rusty, and what they do know is much of it unavaila- 
ble, because learned East or South where conditions, varieties and methods are 
ditferent trom what tney are here. Hence, unless our people bestir themselves, 
two calamities, now hoveting in the air, will drop down on us and result in loss 
impossible to estimate. 
Ist. Seeing the new demand for trees and taking advantage of the present 
general ignoiance of buyers in regard to fruit trees and fruit culture, a host of 
tree sharks will swarm through the country and with their big smooth stories 
and magnified samples of ‘mpossible fruits will unload upen our people untold 
carloads of tender sorts, utterly unsuited, to our climate, as well as the worth- 
less seedlings and culls of all the nurseries in Christendom—trees that ought to 
go to the brush pile, but which will be sold as long as they can find buyers; 
the same as farmers will sell their poor butter, if they have any, where anybody 
can be found who will take it. And 
2d. A majority of those who plant orchards will, unless they post themselves 
in horticulture, lose a percentage of their outlay by neglect and bad culture, 
that will be large enough to be sorely felt in each individual case, and enormous 
in the aggregate of communities. 
These calamities (for there is no better word to designate anything that dis- 
courages fruit culture) have been suffered here before. 
One firm of tree peddlers from Ohio alone is said to have laid down nearly 
worthless stock in Goodhue county, amounting to $10,000, and in Pierce coun- 
ty, Wisconsin, on the opposite side of the Mississippi, $18,000, at one delivery 
in each county, not five hundred dollars of which could have been sold if the 
purchasers had possessed half as much intelligence in horticulture as they would 
have exercised in buying horses, seeds, implements or anything else needed on 
thefarm. One hundred dollars would probably buy all there is left of these de- 
liveries now in both counties, if it could be got together, and it is only about 
three years since it was done, and not only in the two counties named, but on 
the same plan and Jarge scale in all the older settled ones of the northwest. In 
the present state of popular information in regard to horticulture, this thing is 
liable to be done over and over again. Ignorance can be circumvented, and will 
be made to support the rogues of trade as long as it exists. The only precau- 
tion is education. The means are cheap and within the reach of all, nor is it 
