TEACH AS TO FAKMING. 15 



that no sane former, having heard this relation, will henceforth 

 throw away his soap-suds or neglect varnishing his girdled trees, 

 unless he learns some reason for doing otherwise ; and that, if 

 he would do so on the strength of my mere narration, he ought 

 many times rather to do so had he found these same recipes in 

 an Agricultural paper or manual, where the chances are ten to 

 one that it would not have found a place unless on the strength 

 of testimony more reliable than mine, because founded on a wider 

 and more varied experience, and subjected to a more rigid scru- 

 tiny. 



Take another case : My friend Dr. R. T. Underhill was a 

 physician in extensive practice some twenty years ago, when in 

 the prime of life, having bermr heartily tired of gallipots and 

 bone-sawing, he shook off the dust of our city from his feet, and 

 resolved henceforth to live an hom-st lite as a grower of fruits. 

 He went forty miles up the Hudson, bought a neck of land, and 

 commenced the cultivation of the Grape, which he has since pro- 

 secuted with scientific knowledge, untii-iiii; energy, and at length 

 with decided success, He ha< probably assuaged more sutK'rinij 

 with his Crapes than h- '<-<\ by his drugs; he has grown 



considerably younger by hi* t\v-iit\ years' fanning, and is now 

 taking his place among the most brisk and genial of our youth 

 an admirable specimen of that branch of " Young America " which 

 does not hate to work nor long for opportunity to steal. 



Well : the Doctor, since the untimely death of the lamented 

 Downing, stands, probably, at the head of our fruit-growers, with 

 whom one knotty problem of tin- la>t few years has been 

 how to counteract the ravages of the Curculio, which is nearly 

 robbing us of plums, for which his taste is equal to ours, while in 

 the matter of gratifying it he is <l'-ei.le<lly ahead of us. By the 

 time he has taken his quota, the plums left on a tree, or score of 

 trees, are not worth gathering. But Dr. Underhill, by long study 

 and careful observation, has discovered the means of completely 

 outwitting him. He has found, by watching and noting her move- 

 ments, that the female Curculio will not deposit her eggs where 

 they, when the plums containing them drop, will fall into the 



