204 THE APPLE CULTURIST. 



elements in the soil ; and this fact, no doubt, often accounts 

 for the barrenness of fruit-trees and the failure of orchards. 

 The soil is robbed of its nutritive properties year after year 

 no new supply is furnished and out of nothing, nothing 

 can come. The practical lesson is obvious : we must feed 

 our fruit trees if we expect them to feed us. 



Itinerant Grafters. Taken as a class, they are no more 

 reliable than Jew peddlers who are selling stolen goods. 

 They have wrought irreparable mischief in many a thrifty 

 orchard, by cutting off such a large proportion of the 

 branches, that almost every tree received an injurious al- 

 most fatal set-back, by having too much of the top re- 

 moved at one time. In almost every part of the country, 

 people have been outrageously deceived by itinerant graft- 

 ers. They traverse the country, and take orders to do 

 grafting at so much apiece for all that live, or at so much 

 for each cion set, ready pay. "When the season of grafting 

 comes, a few workmen come along with a wagon-load of 

 cions, containing, professedly, every variety that could pos- 

 sibly be called for, all procured from the most responsible 

 source; and as a proof of this, a catalogue of some well- 

 known nurseryman is exhibited, and, it may be, a forged 

 bill or invoice, while the cions were, in many instances, cut 

 from some of the orchards they had been grafting in. Thou- 

 sands of orchards have been ruined in this way. We have 

 in mind an orchard which has been grafted by one of these 

 rogues, and, instead of having some three or four select 

 sorts, he had a, collection of vile rubbish, mostly natural 

 fruit ; and, in some cases, three or four different sorts were 

 grafted on a tree. We might cite cases of this sort which 

 have come to our knowledge, enough to fill a dozen pages. 

 In some parts of the country, people are more cautious and 

 careful than formerly, so that few men now are willing to 

 trust unknown, irresponsible persons with the important 



