1839] 



FARMERS- REGISTER 



191 



have been maintained and even increased, while 

 the commodity bought was in many cases every 

 day getting much worse by keeping, and by the ad- 

 vance of the season. It is astonishing that there 

 should be so little regard paid to the preservation 

 of the healthy condition, and even of the vitality, 

 of the trees and cuttings which are held and sold 

 at such high prices. It would seem as if most of 

 both the holders for sale, and the purchasers for 

 planting, believed that ihe cuttings would pre- 

 serve both lile and health under any kind of treat- 

 ment, or degree of exposure. Many will find 

 themselves egregiously mistaken; and many thou- 

 sands of trees, whether with or without roots, 

 which have been kept for sale, drying through all 

 winter, will either not vegetate at all, or a puny and 

 sickly progeny of plants will be produced from the 

 dried and almost sapless stems and cuttings. Ma- 

 ny tliousands of other plants will have perished 

 by too much care improperly bestowed for protec- 

 tion ; which losses, however, will fall on the hold- 

 ers, as such plants will be too obviouly damaged, 

 or spoiled, to be used. Those holders who have 

 refused to sell until the planting cannot be longer 

 safely delayed, and still more those whose stocks are 

 the worse for keeping, must then sell,or lose all; and 

 under such circumstances, it seems not unlikely that 

 there will be a sudden fall in price, in such places as 

 the too great anxiety for higher prices has caused 

 plants to be kept back too long, or where neglect 

 and bad management have caused them to be in- 

 jured. The holder who cannot use a stock that 

 would perish in a kw days, will of course sell at 

 any price rather than lose all. And yet, those 

 xvho may wait and buy under such circumstances, 

 may find the lowest prices much the dearest in the 

 end. There remain, however, very few for sale in 

 Virginia, and almost none, except such as have 

 been recently sent on from the north. 



The planting is already nearly over in lower 

 Virginia, and all farther south ; and indeed the 

 buds have so much started that still earlier plant- 

 ing would have been safer. When the planting 

 season is quite over, and no more cuttings can be 

 set out, then will begin the sales of the growing 

 «rop. And in regard to these, the public may be 

 prepared for much unintentional deception, as well 

 as gross and designed frauds. The enhancement 

 of price was so sudden last year, that none had 

 prepared to deceive ; and no counterfeit article has 

 been yet heard of, except some bass-wood cuttings 

 sold' in Massachusetts. But it is so easy to sub- 

 stitute other kinds of mulberry trees and cuttings 

 ibr the multicaulis, that it will be done to great ex- 

 tent, if the prices should be high enough to invite 

 such frauds. There will be no safety lor buyers 

 except in their either seeing the plants when in leaf, 

 or receiving them immediately of the planter, and 



having in his character, or in other proof^ a suffi- 

 cient guaranty of the absence of fraud. In the 

 manner in which numerous and large sales have 

 been made, the same stock passing through the 

 hands of four or five successive holders betweeo 

 the raiser and the final owner, all responsibility is 

 lost ; and if a fraud had been committed, it would 

 be impossible to fix it on the real perpetrator, nor 

 would it have been suspected by the other and 

 honest holders of the stock so adulterated or sub- 

 stituted. 



We mentioned unintentional deception — which, 

 may seem a contradiction in terms. There was^. 

 however, much of this during the past season, 

 (and even unavoidably so,) in the circumstances 

 of the same stocks being advertised by several 

 successive holders, and the advertisements being 

 all before the public at once, making it appear that 

 each particular stock or quantity was three or four 

 times as great as it really was. A system much 

 more deceplioue, we are sorry to see, has already 

 been commenced, and which may be extended ad 

 infinitum. By an advertisement in a Georgia pa- 

 per, a dealer in Virginia offers to sell five millions 

 of trees next November, when the offerer certainly 

 does not own, nor probably has the control of a 

 tenth, if even a hundredth part of the number of- 

 fered. All that is meant by any such offer as 

 this, when the advertiser has not the trees actual- 

 ly planted and belonging to himself, is, that if he 

 can make an advantageous engagement to sell a 

 number of trees, that he will engage to procure 

 enough to furnish the supply — and thus contrive 

 to make one engagement meet another. But if 

 the very erroneous inference were drawn, that 

 each adventurer actually held the trees he may of- 

 fer to sell, it may appear that there are for sale by 

 our planters a hundred times as many as are actu- 

 ally growing in all Virginia, or even in all the 

 world. 



ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIOKS TO SUBSCRI- 

 BERS. 



In answer to numerous inquiries, or remarks, 

 showing mistaken and erroneous impressions of 

 subscribers and correspondents, (some case of 

 which is continually presented,) it is deemed pro- 

 per to give here the following general answers or 

 explanations] though the same in purport have 

 been repeatedly stated in the conditionsj or in oth- 

 er notices to the public. 



Inhere are no general agents for the Farmers^ 

 Register, nor will any such agency be established, 

 vvithotit previous notice, nor is any such measure 

 now designed. Neither is there any special or 

 limited agency, except to this extent, that the 



