PACT NUMBER THREE. 63 



western states companies have been formed, who have plant- 

 ted nurseries, and divided an interest of 30 per cent. There 

 is one of this kind in the vicinity of St. Louis which will com- 

 pare to advantage, if not in point of extent, at least in respect 

 to the purity and healthiness of stock and the variety and rich- 

 ness of fruit, with the best nurseries in the old states. An in- 

 terest is now forming to introduce an establishment of this 

 kind in East Florida, for the express purpose of supplying our 

 market with healthy fruit trees. Here, then, the evil so wan- 

 tonly inflicted, will be found, as it ever has been found, to re- 

 coil in the end, upon the heads of the evil doers. These frauds, 

 these cunningly devised cheats, are wrong ; — wrong in any 

 state, and doubly wrong in a young and growing state like 

 ours, where every false step carries us back toward the cor- 

 rupt and rotten condition of the old countries of the East,— a 

 condition to which no true son of America, will ever feel 

 ambitious of being immediately promoted. 



We are not ignorant of the fact that the profession of pro- 

 pagating and training nursery trees for the purposes of fruit, 

 has become a very widely spread business in our young 

 confederacy, and that large estates are embarked in that 

 pursuit. Nor are we ignorant of the fact that some of 

 those estates, are conducted with the utmost fairness, and with 

 all due respect to the character and standing of the profes- 

 sion, and the just expectations of the public in behalf of fair 

 and wholesome fruit. That all of them are not so conduct- 

 ed, is the evil of which we complain, — the evil which we 

 aim to cure. How far we shall succeed in effecting a reme- 

 dy, time only will determine. 



We are fully aware, that in making our statements, we are 

 stepping on the toes of those who have corns, and therefore, 

 we feel bound, for the present, to tread lightly. Though to 

 this widely sweeping charge, we are able to make some hon- 

 orable exceptions, we deem it prudent to let distinctions rest 



