PREFACE. IX 



perience of actual cultivators ; upon well-purged 

 lists of fully proved and living trees, whose fruit 

 had been properly tested and characterized, and 

 of whose identification there was, finally, no ques- 

 tion. A book unincumbered with useless descrip- 

 tions of worthless varieties, and unneeded direc- 

 tions for j)lanting and cultivation, and free from 

 all guess-w^ork, and all unverified statements, 

 and confusing *and half-recognized synonyms. 

 A descriptive and concise list, in fact, of such 

 actual fruits, as are well established, and clearly 

 identified, with their most generally accepted 

 names, and their most marked and unmistak- 

 able characteristics. 



And this was the plan designed and undertaken 

 by the practical and practiced author of the pre- 

 sent work. Himself a fruit-grower of diversified 

 experience, and having been in correspondence 

 for years wdth some of the most prominent and 

 successful cultivators in the United States, espe- 

 cially with those whose experience has chiefly 

 related to the peculiarities and requisitions of the 

 Middle and Korth- Western States, and feeling, in 

 his own practice, the want of such a ready guide 

 as the one contemplated in his plan, he came to 



