62 FACT NUMBER THREE. 



proclaims its condition, and every attempt at deception, lies 

 as open to his eye as a noon-tide sunbeam. It is the want 

 of knowledge in this behalf, among the great mass of man- 

 kind, who are the buyers, not the raisers, of fruit trees, that 

 has opened the Avay to the practice of impositions ; and though 

 it may add something to the credit and standing of the 

 American bred citizen, to say the frauds lie at the door of the 

 nurseryman from abroad more generally than at his, still 

 they are none the less reprehensible,— none the less disastrous 

 both to the propagation of good fruit and the moral char- 

 acter of our country. " I bought those trees," (pointing to a 

 yard of stinted saplings,) " of neighbor" , (said a gen- 

 tleman of fortune, a few days since,) " and I gave him a 

 round price for them, for he pronounced them the best fruit 

 in his nursery ; but, I hardly know how it is, my ground I 

 fear is not of the right kind to grow fruit, for I have nursed 

 them with unwearied care for more than five years, yet they 

 have never shown me a blossom ! They have really become 

 an eye-sore to me, and I am resolved to have them removed 

 out of sight." 



In a few minutes, the jack-knife related the whole history 

 of the scrawny fruit trees; everyone of them was canker 

 eaten at the root, and as black as the ace of spades at the 

 heart, and they had all been death smitten long before they 

 left Mr. 's nursery ! 



Look into the towns and villages of the whole western 

 country, and the complaint will be found almost universal. 

 Choice fruit trees, as they were called, have been taken from 

 some of our far famed neighboring nurseries to the distances 

 of two, three, and even four thousand miles, at a most griev- 

 ous outlay of time and money, with the hope of enjoying the 

 luxury of rich and elegant table fruit, but in the end, every 

 prospect built upon the boasted purity and excellence of the 

 stock, has utterly perished. Such has been the frauds on one 

 side and the disappointments on the other, that, in some of the 



