40 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



procuring their catalogues, observing their prices and selecting those 

 sorts which liave been long proved valuable, avoiding unknown and 

 high-piiced novelties ; buying only of agents who can show full cre- 

 dentials of recent date ; or still better, where practicable, ordering 

 directly from the nursery. All this will require time, inquiry, care 

 and labor, and possibh" years of time, but success in any business 

 is not to be reached without labor. Information may be varioush' 

 obtained — from neighbors who have studied the subject ; from peri- 

 odicals ; from books ; from visiting fruit gardens, and bj- gradually 

 and cautiously working into fruit growing. 



The discouragements which many have met with b^' these frauds 

 have led them to assert that all nurseries are full of errors and im- 

 postures. There is no necessitN' for error. Nurseries may be freed 

 from them as well as a bank from counterfeit bills. The writer can 

 adduce a single case in proof now that he has long since gone out 

 of the business. He supplied a well known pomologist with a thou- 

 sand trees, of as many different sorts as he had, for home planting. 

 "When they all bore, the owner averred that everv one proved true to 

 name. They were all propagated from proved sources. 



CULTIVATIOX OF FEUIT. 

 By T. S. McLellan, of Brunswick. 



By the politeness of the officers of this Society, I have been re- 

 quested to prepare an article on fruit culture, to be read at this 

 meeting. I could hardl}- feel like declining, although I am well 

 aware that there are many members present who are much more 

 capable and better qualified for preparing such an article than m\self, 

 but probably ver}- few, if an^•, have had a longer experience, as I 

 had nn' little nursery of apple pips in one corner of my fjtther's 

 garden nearly- seventy years ago, and since that time have possessed 

 a deep interest in the cultivation of fruit. At that earl}- age I 

 labored under the impression that "like begets like" and carefully 

 saved the seeds of every nice apple, pear, &.O., which came into my 

 possession, and planted them in my little nursery ; but as my trees 

 grew and yielded fruit, I learned that with apple seeds, as with some 

 other things, the best were liable to produce the most worthless 

 fruit, and out of hundreds of trees raised from the seeds of good 

 fruit not one in five hundred will be worth propagating. 



