Tenth Annual Meeting 157 



tree in preference to the larger one everj^ time. When I send 

 in my money orders to the nurserymen for an order of trees I 

 say to them, "Give me a 252- to 3 -foot tree, and if you do not 

 have them, give me something smaller." That is the way I 

 send my orders. If you don't specify what size you want the 

 nurserymen will be apt to send you larger trees. That is a trick 

 the nurserymen have. They want to get rid of their big stock 

 every time. • I have had a lot of experience with nurserymen, 

 and there are some of then that are infernal rascals, but there 

 are a lot more of them that are as white as the driven snow. 

 Some of them are not so bad as they are made out. If 3'ou 

 make a nurseryman give you what you want, and know what 

 you want yourself, you won't have so much trouble. 



Now, then, I want to tell you about this man over in 

 Texas that has been writing about trees. He told us a few 

 years ago that when we planted the young trees we must cut 

 the roots of all the trees, and then take a stick and make a 

 hole in the ground and put the tree in. I swallowed it. I 

 planted a little block of a thousand peach trees that way. I 

 didn't say anything, but I thought. I would see what there 

 was in it. He said it didn't hurt to cut them ofi, so I cut 

 them off up to two or three inches from the stem. I thought 

 I was going to wake up the neighborhood on how to prune 

 the roots of peach trees. That fall, when I counted the dead 

 trees, I had a trifle over eight hundred dead ones in the block. 

 The other two hundred looked as though they wanted to die, 

 and I thought I would let them. I took them out. Now 

 this fellow is out with another idea. He says that you must 

 not only do that, but you must tamp the ground hard. He 

 says, to take a piece of timber and ram the ground hard. You 

 must cut the roots off the tree, and put the tree in the hole, 

 and ram your ground, and then he says that you mustn't go 

 to cultivating only a few feet out in the center, and just clip 

 ofi the ground up around the trees. Well, probably you gen- 

 tlemen won't do that. I hope you won't. I have had enough 

 of his ideas. 



Now, gentlemen, in regard to cultivation. I believe in 

 cultivating. Commence as early in the spring as the ground 

 is ready, and cultivate right along to the first of August. That 



