Obtaining Plants and Improving our Stock. 85 



whose names they bear. It is best to buy of those who have a " local 

 habitation and a name," and then, if anything is wrong, one knows where 

 to look for redress. 



Even if one wishes to be accurate, it is difficult to know that one's 

 stock is absolutely pure and true to name. The evil of mixed plants is 

 more often perpetuated in the following innocent manner than by any 

 intentional deception : For instance, one buys from a trustworthy source, 

 as he supposes, a thousand 4< Monarch " strawberry plants, and sets them 

 out in the spring. All blossoms should be picked off the first year, and, 

 therefore, there can be no fruit as a test of purity that season. But by 

 fall there are many thousands of young plants. The grower naturally 

 says : " I bought these for the Monarch, therefore they are Monarchs," 

 and he sells many plants as such. When coming into fruit the second 

 summer, he finds, however, that not one in twenty is a Monarch plant. 

 As an honest man, he now digs them under in disgust ; but the mischief 

 has already been done, and scattered throughout the country are 

 thousands of mixed plants which multiply with the vigor of evil. 

 Nurserymen should never take varieties for granted, no matter where 

 obtained. I endeavor so to train my eye that I can detect the distin- 

 guishing marks even in the foliage and blossoms, and if anything looks 

 suspicious I root it out The foliage of the Monarch of the West is so 

 distinct that if one learns to know it he can tell whether his plants are 

 mixed at a glance. 



If possible, the nurseryman should start with plants that he knows to be 

 genuine, and propagate from them. Then, by constant and personal vigi- 

 lance, he can maintain a stock that will not be productive chiefly of pro- 

 fanity when coming into fruit. This scrutiny of propagating beds is a 

 department that I shall never delegate to any one else. 



It is not thrift to save in the first cost of plants, if thereby the risk of 

 obtaining poor, mixed varieties is increased. I do not care to save five 

 dollars to-day and lose fifty by the operation within a year. A gentleman 

 wrote to me: " I have been outrageously cheated in buying plants." On 

 the same page he asked me to furnish stock at rates as absurdly low as 

 those of the man who cheated him. If one insists on having an article at 

 far less than the cost of production, it is not strange that he finds some who 

 will "cheat him outrageously." I find it by far the cheapest in the long 

 run to go to the most trustworthy sources, and pay the grower a price 

 which enables him to give me just what I want 



When plants are both fine and genuine they can still be spoiled, or, at 

 least, injured in transit from the ground where they grew. Dig so as to 



