276 ANNUAL REPORT. 



The following paper was then read : 



HUMBUGS IN HORTICULTURE. 

 By M. Cutler, Sumter. 



Our constitution says the object of this Society shall be to improve the condition 

 of pomology, horticulture and arboriculture, by collecting and disseminating cor- 

 rect information concerning the culture of such fruits, flowers, trees, and other 

 horticultural productions as are adapted to the soil and climate of Minnesota. Now, 

 if this is the object of the Society it is its duty not only to recommend the best 

 methods of accomplishing that object, but to oppose and denounce everything 

 that is calculated to prevent it. I see before me the tree planter, the nurseryman, 

 and the farmer, all members of one body, working together harmoniously. The 

 natural inference is that their interests are identical, and the inference might be 

 correct if it were not for another element that comes between the two. This 

 element is notoriously scarce at horticultural meetings. I refer to the tree agent, 

 not to the honorable, upright one, but to the sharp, tricky fellow who has no regard 

 for the gray hairs of the aged, or the poor crippled defender of our country, if by 

 fraud, trickery and lying he can sell inferior nursery stock at enormous prices. 

 Two of these leeches can do more injury to horticulture in a county in one month 

 than twelve honorable men can overcome in five j'ears. They deserve the fate of 

 the serpent that caused the expulsion of Adam, the first horticulturist, from the 

 Garden of Eden. Surely of all humbugs the professional tree agent is the greatest. 

 He is to an honorable man as a green persimmon is to the luscious peach. To illus- 

 trate their wily ways I will give some of my own experience and that of others in 

 our county. Some five or six years since an agent from Dayton, Ohio, came into 

 the county and sold stock to the extent of several hundreds of dollars. He was so 

 oily tougued that he made some of the farmers believe that even prunes and pears 

 would grow there. One poor German farmer was induced to buy nearly one 

 hundred dollars worth. The stock delivered was overgrown and worthless, such 

 as nurserymen are glad to sell for a song, and sing half of it themselves. The 

 poor man not only lost his money, but the time spent in setting the stock out. 



Last spring, as I was transplanting strawberry plants, there came into my field 

 quite a portly fellow who introduced himself as an agent for a well advertised chain 

 of nurseries, located in Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas, etc., and stated that he was sell- 

 ing nice crown budded trees grown at Sparta, Wis. He exhibited a large number 

 of specimens of wood cut from black-hearted Wealthy and Duchess root-grafted 

 trees, also a specimen of wood, white and sound, which he said was cut from bud- 

 ded trees he had delivered at Arlington. He next exhibited root-grafts and a seed- 

 ling root well supplied with small fibrous roots, which he claimed to be of Freuch 

 crab origin, and stated that they took a two-year-old French crab seedling, budded 

 it, then let it stand three years in the nursery, when they sold a three-year-old tree 

 on a five-year-old root. He said that where the union was made in root-grafts; 

 mold formed, which was the cause of black-heart. He would warrant his trees, 

 and if they died he would replace them. He offered to let me have half a dozen 

 for five dollars. I told him I had not heard before that budded trees were hardier 

 than root-grafts, that if such was the case I thought our nurserymen would prac- 



