ABOUT FBUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 259 



3. Although the "Fruit and Fruit-trees of America" 

 professes to give the process of management only for the 

 garden and the orchard, it ought to include, and we pre- 

 sume was designed to embrace the essential features of 

 nursery culture. Every cultivator of fruit must be a private 

 nurseryman ; he needs the same information, the same direc- 

 tions as if he were a commercial gardener. He that designs 

 planting an orchard ought to know the disposition of each 

 variety of fruit-tree, that he may suit the circumstances of 

 his soil, or provide for the peculiarities of a tree, as a 

 farmer needs to know the peculiarities of the different 

 breeds of hogs and cattle. With a large number of persons 

 it would be enough to say of fruits, " superb," " extra- 

 superb," "superlatively grand," "extra magnificent;" for 

 such, a princely catalogue would answer every purpose. 

 But such as have some knowledge, and every year, we are 

 happy to believe, the number of such increases, ask, not the 

 author's bare eulogy, but a definite statement of all those 

 special qualities on which such eulogy is founded. The 

 exact taste of each variety of fruit should be studied in res- 

 pect to soil; some, and but few, love strong clays; yet 

 fewer thrive upon wet soils ; but some will, as the Sweet or 

 Carolina June, which does well on quite wet soils; some 

 refuse their gifts except upon a warm and rich sand ; some, 

 and by far the greatest number, love a deep loam, with a 

 subsoil moist without being wet. The buds of some varie- 

 ties escape the vernal frosts by their hardiness; some by 

 putting forth later than their orchard brethren. Some 

 varieties thrive admirably by ground or root grafting, while 

 very many, so worked, are killed off during the first winter; 

 some varieties, if budded, grow off with alacrity, others are 

 dull and unwilling ; some form their tops with facility and 

 beauty; others, like many men, are rambling, awkward, 

 and averse to any head at all. Some sorts, put upon what 

 stock you will, have singularly massive roots ; others have 

 fine and slender ones. Every variety of tree has traits of 



