534 Principles and Practice of Horticulture. 



Art. II. Desultory Remarks on the Principles and Practice 

 of Horticulture. By Wm. Saunders, New Haven, Conn. 



The amount of pleasure to be derived from horticulture, 

 and the interest taken in it by its patrons, will, generally, be 

 found in a pretty exact ratio with the success resulting from 

 their operations, and the accomplishment of the objects and 

 ends towards which their labor has been applied. Many who 

 have entered enthusiastically in the cultivation of fruit trees, 

 for instance, have, after a time, become disheartened by their 

 want of success, and the enumeration of their failures has 

 hindered others from attempting it. And, truly, when we 

 look to the long array of difficulties, real or supposed, that 

 are, from time to time, promulgated, there is some allowance 

 for the conclusion. I say supposed difficulties, for it is evi- 

 dent that, in many instances, no effort has been made to trace 

 effects to their proper causes ; and, in some cases, where the 

 effort has been made, to use a familiar phrase, " the saddle 

 has been put on the wrong horse." As instances, I may 

 mention the occasional blistering of the leaves of peach trees, 

 in the early part of summer, which I have heard stoutly ar- 

 serted was produced by the aphides, and I once failed in try- 

 ing to convince a worthy old gentleman that it was a fly 

 which caused the leaves of his apple trees to curl, and not, 

 as he supposed, the ants he saw running up and down the 

 stem ; and in the last number of your Magazine we have an- 

 other illustration of the fact, in the article on pear tree blight, 

 where that malady is, I think, traced to its proper source. 



It may safely be assumed then, that many of the causes 

 assigned for particular effects, have been prematurely arrived 

 at, and facts have been thrown aside to make way for long 

 cherished theories, which, when investigated, have been 

 found to be simply absurd, and contrary to any law or pro- 

 vision of nature; for, although the culture of plants, as arti- 

 cles of food, or objects of beauty, dates from a very ancient 

 period, it is only very lately understood to be founded on 

 general and fixed principles ; and I believe that I am justi- 

 fied in saying that the majority of those who cultivate the 

 soil, have yet to learn that it is by the operation of natural 



