1 66 An American Fruit-Farm 



plant, but some poor plants are there. The 

 accumulated experience of the neighborhood, of 

 other sections of country, and notably your own ex- 

 perience — ^usually very expensive — taken together 

 with the wisdom of bulletins and reports from 

 Agricultural Stations, contribute toward a closer 

 realization of the perfect fruit-farm. 



This all means that the fruit-grower to-day has 

 access to aids and facilities in his vocation hitherto 

 unknown. Fruit-raising is a science, a branch of 

 chemistry, just as chemistry itself is an aspect of 

 Natiure, — a peep into her operations which we dub 

 with a technical word. Countless millions of dol- 

 lars are now capitalized in fruit-farms and related 

 interests. We try to do precisely what Hesiod 

 and Varro and Cato of old, and all horticulturists 

 and farmers since their day have tried to do, and 

 we do much as they did. There are no more bones 

 in the human body than in the days of ^Escula- 

 pius or Galen; no more ingredients of fertile soil 

 than when Cato was farming at Tusculimi. The 

 names of common diseases may be found in medical 

 books four hundred years old. But while the 

 names are identical, both surgery and medicine 

 are more scientific now than then. Horticulture 

 too has become scientific. We know very little 

 about raising fruit as compared with the unknown, 

 and we are working out knowledge all the time by 

 experiment as well as by experience. For example : 

 Cato advises to "manure pastures in early spring 

 in the dark of the moon, when the west wind begins 



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