270 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



WESTERN JOURNALISM. 



2opy of the " Montana Fruit Grower " has just been examined by 

 the writer with considerable interest. The free and easy manner 

 with which the typical Western Journalist and correspondent uses 

 the English language is well known and easily recognized. That 

 this peculiar style of diction is not in vogue only with daily and 

 weekly news and business sheets, may be inferred from the following 

 sentences taken from a more than usually racy article in the Journal 

 mentioned above, in which the practice of buying foreign grown nursery stock is 

 denounced and the danger of importing injurious diseases and insects is empha- 

 sized. 



" Here we see a quarrel in progress between New York and Washington 

 as to which has given us the great wild, woolly, white-eyed, bald-faced, and 



peaked-toed tree aphis. This terrible monster was purchased by some 'd ' like 



myself, from one or the other of them, when he could have bought better stock at 

 half the price right across the next section from his home ranch. Yes, Mr. 

 Editor, that is just what I did, although I did not import the wild and woolly 

 monster then or since. I can, however, produce a man who knows the " wall- 

 eyed critter " by his roar, who found one, a whole one, alive and foaming at the 

 mouth, on a tree that came from New York the same as mine did. Mine, how- 

 ever, was small fruit, and had sat in a flat car at Missouri 7 days, and were dead 

 or died shortly after planting. I paid $1 apiece for some varieties. Three of 

 us — neighbors — saved one tree, a plum, out of orders aggregating $50, with the 

 best of care, out of that flat car. At the same time I planted the same kind of 

 fruit from the nursery across the section, which are in blossom this year, and 

 may perhaps bear some fruit. These last did not cost me a cent, the owner of 

 the nursery having given them to me to place along side my boasted $1 apiece 

 New York stock to see if they would grow, he said. He is zn old country 

 German, was a 'Koenig's Gsertner ' there, sort of purveyor to the ' Pooh Bah,' 

 of Germany, I suppose." 



The following advice is given with regard to purchasing Eastern nursery 

 stock : 



" I say, let us ranchers buy from neither a ' New York insect and tree 

 raiser,' or a ' Washington bug and blackberry grower,' or an ' Idaho snail and 

 strawberry planter,' but, let us buy our fruit trees right at home in Montana. 

 Let us band together to get State laws passed so that no one can sell these pes- 

 tiferous, infectious things to suckers like myself who give them a dollar apiece 

 for their dead and dying — travel-killed — bug coffins. We shall not anyhow 

 have to be paying freight on such monsters as the woolly aphis." 



Comment on the above is hardly necessary. We trust that the need of this 

 vivid " Arizona Kicker," style is not felt at present nor likely to be demanded 

 by Canadian Horticulturist readers in the future. J. C 



