Notes and Gleanings. i83 



Duty or No Duty. — No doubt this question has often been suggested of 

 late to our American nursery-men and horticulturists, and perhaps in many 

 cases considerately and wisely settled. I am consciously unable to treat the 

 matter as it deserves, possibly may suggest nothing new ; but believing, as I do, 

 that it is a question which has most important bearings on the interests and 

 prosperity of our horticulture, I am led to recur to the matter by noticing the 

 reply to "Importer, N.Y.," in your Letter Box for the present month, which 

 recommends the entire abrogation of duty on all imported seeds, trees, plants, 

 and shrubs. 



It seems to us that this would take away a most valuable safeguard from the 

 nursery-men and fruit-growers of our country, and open the way for an endless 

 amount of mercenary and unscrupulous importation, which would damage the 

 interests of our horticulture to an extent hardly to be realized. 



Though we would speak with a modesty becoming one of the brotherhood, 

 we are bound to believe that no class of persons is more closely identified with 

 the permanent, healthful growth and prosperity of our land than our nursery- 

 men, horticulturists, and fruit-growers, who are continually expending a vast 

 amount of time, capital, and skill in selecting all that is most promising in the 

 products of foreign lands ; in planting, acclimating, and thoroughly testing these 

 selections on our soil ; and in offering to the home-market whatever proves to be 

 of real merit. They are dependent, of course, on the profits of their trade, and 

 pay protective prices for means to carry it on. Now, if the duties on such impor- 

 tations are to be swept away, and the stock from our American nurseries is to be 

 brought into direct competition with the low-priced-labor products of Europe, 

 it must result in a most disastrous injustice to a large and prominent class of 

 our business men. It is hardly an apology for this, that the removal of the im- 

 post will lead amateurs and private planters to import more generally, and thus 

 further the interests of our horticulture. Those who do this in the line of an 

 extensive and established business are enabled to do it with unusual facilities, 

 and with all the wisdom and judgment which experience can give : they have a 

 certainty of satisfactory success which no amateur could reasonably look for. 

 To deprive them of the protection which the present tariff secures would be most 

 lamentably discouraging to every effort and enterprise in this direction, and 

 necessarily prove a most harassing impediment to this important branch of 

 American industry. Is it not eminently just, and essential to our truest horti- 

 cultural interests, that they should have the fullest advantage of the duty as at 

 present afforded ? 



I believe that the experience of the past has also taught a lesson in the same 

 direction. It is known that there have been, in many of our large cities, agents, 

 so called, of foreign nurseries, who have offered trees, plants, and seeds of foreign 

 growth at astonishingly low prices : which it is fair to presume were such stock 

 as could be landed here at the lowest rates, without regard to its quality or 

 adaptation to our climate ; in many cases, no doubt, mere refuse, for which tiie 

 producer could find no market except by means of such a second-hand trade. 

 As an occasion of thorough vexation and disappointment to the unsuspecting 



