HUMBUGS IN HORTICULTURE. 227 



HUMBUGS IN HORTICULTURE, 



BY PETER HENDERSON. 



(An Essay Read at the Annual Meeting of the National Association 



of Nurserymen, Florists, and Seedsmen, held at Chicago., 111., 



June 16, 1880.) 



THE life-time experience of any man is not too short 

 to be imposed upon by many of the hundreds of old 

 varieties of fruits, flowers, or vegetables that are sent out 

 annually under new names. Any well-posted nursery- 

 man can easily detect when a Bartlett Pear or a Baldwin 

 Apple appears under a new name; or a florist, making a 

 specialty of Roses, knows, as, for example, when, some 

 years ago, the old Solfaterre Rose was sent out under the 

 name of "Augusta," (claiming it to be hardy in every 

 State of the Union, and sold as a great bargain at $5 

 apiece,) that the venders thereof were either swindlers or 

 entirely ignorant of the business they had embarked in; 

 or when the confiding market gardener is induced to buy 

 a new and superior Cabbage* or Tomato seed at $5 an 

 ounce, and finds them identical with varieties that he can 

 buy at half that price per pound, he has good reason to 

 come to the conclusion that the man from whom he 

 purchased was either a humbug or else unfitted, from his 

 ignorance, to engage in the business of a seedsman. 



But, unfortunately, from the varied nature of these 

 impostures, it is exceedingly difficult to mete out justice, 

 to those who, knowingly or otherwise, place such swindles 

 on the horticultural community; for the man who grows 



