THIRTEEXTH ANNUAL MEETING. 65 



of gardening' tlicn llie fruit trees are useful and ought not to 

 be neglected. 



A fruit garden, therefore, to come back to the point, may 

 be made with the old-fashioned ideas predominating, that is, 

 to include the fruit trees and give. beauty and grace to the 

 place. That is, the ornamental idea may prevail as well as the 

 idea to have fruit. The first great contrast will come at the 

 point of selecting the varieties. We have heard it preached 

 to us that we should grow fewer and fewer varieties. I heard 

 an eminent man talking on this subject a few days ago, and he 

 said, "If you are going to plant apples they might just as well 

 all be Baldwins ; but if }ou go out to those states of Southern 

 Missouri, Kansas, etc., they will tell you they should all be 

 Ben Davis's ; while this is open for argument, there is a very 

 good principle involved." But that principle does not apply in 

 the case of the fruit garden. \M'iile we should under some cir- 

 cumstances confine our selections to a small number of varieties, 

 we should usually consider a number of varieties. Indeed, I 

 think it is always advisable to have as large a number of 

 varieties as one can care for. If one is in love with fruit he 

 wants a number of varieties. I know a man who has 300 dif- 

 ferent kinds on his place, and I have heard him say 299 of them 

 are worthless. But that doesn't make any difference ; he gets 

 just as much fun out of the 299 as he does out of the other. 

 He notices them when they come into bloom, and all their 

 different characters appeal to him. I know another man who 

 has a very large collection of the different varieties of pear 

 trees. He knows a good many of them are not valuable ; he 

 knows they are not a delicious pear, nor are they worth anything 

 at all ; he knows he could not sell them for anything, and yet 

 he gets lots of pleasure out of that pear orchard. 



Now look here ; I know people who appear to be in their 

 right mind ; they appear to be sensible and of good judgment ; 

 yet they will go and make a collection of stamps. Now if a 

 man has a right and finds enjoyment in collecting stamps, how 

 much better could he do by getting up a collection of pear or 

 apple trees? I don't know where this fad for collecting comes 

 from, but when it comes I would rather it would be plums than 

 stamps. 



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