INTRODUCTION. 



No other portion of the agriculture of our country is at this time receiving 

 so much attention as that devoted to the culture of Fruit. The growing of young 

 trees in nurseries, as an art, has been greatly improved, and the supply of such trees 

 is enormous. Books have been prepared by men of eminent ability and mature 

 experience, giving all necessary information for the management of the orchard; and 

 the fruits that have been proved valuable have been carefully figured and described. 



Some men are devoting much attention to the improvement of kinds, and with 

 most satisfactory results. Fruits that were highly esteemed a few years ago are now 

 superseded, and amateurs hope to identify their names with better sorts; and why 

 not '? There seems to be no limit set by nature to improvement in this direction. 

 The Seckel Pear was found growing wild in a hedgerow. Probably the blossom 

 that produced the pear, from the seed of which that tree grew, had been visited by a 

 bee dusty with pollen from another blossom, and thus a germ was fertilized, which 

 in time brought forth this hybrid of such surpassing excellence. The science of 

 Botany teaches us that we can hybridize as well as bees, and improvements in 

 fruits are now brought about as the designs of men rather than as the accidents 

 of insects. Grafting, budding, and the propagation by cuttings give us the means of 

 multiplying these better kinds with a rapidity characteristic of the age. But with all 

 these signs of progress, the supply of fruit is far short of the wants of the people. 

 The prices are often extravagant to the consumers, and do not always remunerate the 

 producers. 



There is no subject more frequently spoken of in Horticultural and Agricultu- 

 ral societies than the decay of fruit trees. We must all admit, that in the older 

 States of our country, orchards do not flourish as they did fifty years ago, and the 

 crops of every variety of fruit are becoming more uncertain. I have heard many dis- 

 cussions on this subject, and have often been surprised how little of the cause of this 

 decay, or the uncertainty of the crop, is ever attributed to insect enemies. One per- 

 son will ascribe all this change to exhaustion of soil ; another to improper planting or 

 defective cultivation. Others think there has been too little or too much pruning. 

 Some will impute the defect to a want of the proper elements in the soil, or of 

 a right proportion of those elements either the lime, the potash, the clay, the sand, 

 or the humus is not present, or not in the exact quantity to meet the demands of the 

 growing tree or of the ripening fruit. I have heard farmers speak learnedly on this 

 subject (quoting Liebig and other authorities), whose orchards were overrun with 



