PREFACE ""gg* 



LIBRARY 



THE commercial interests have so continuously and 

 completely held the horticultural stage in America dur- 

 ing the last two decades that it has been impossible 

 for amateur horticulture to get in a word edgewise. 

 Any public speaker or writer has had to talk about 

 several acres at a time or he would not be listened to. 

 He has been obliged to insist that his scheme would 

 pay on a commercial scale before anyone would hear, 

 much less consider, what he had to tell. 



But now a change is coming. Different conditions 

 are already upon us. A thousand signs indicate the 

 new era. With hundreds yes thousands of men 

 and women now horticulture is an avocation, a pas- 

 time. They grow trees largely for the pleasure of it; 

 and their gardens are built amidst surroundings which 

 would make commercial pomology laugh at itself. 



And so I undertake to offer the first American fruit 

 book in a quarter century which can boldly declare 

 its independence of the professional element in fruit 

 growing. I am confident that dwarf fruit trees have 

 some commercial possibilities, but they are of far 

 greater importance to the small householder, the owner 



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