STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 47 



the requisites to success, whether olitained at the start or after years 

 of persistent labor. Now if the nursery business here in INIaine 

 has failed in any degree to meet the wants of our people, and I 

 think it has, it is because of several reasons, one of which is a lack 

 of capital. We don't lack the right kind of climate, we don't lack 

 the right kind of soil, in Maine It has been abundantly' proved by 

 several who have attempted the business, that nearly all of our 

 varieties of apples can be safely and successfully budded and grafted 

 in the nursery, about the only exceptions being the Baldwin and 

 Roxbur}' Russet, and even these perhaps might be, could the}- be 

 tested thoroughly and intelligenth' and under circumstances wholl}- 

 favorable to tliem. In latitude we are onh* sixty or sixty-five miles 

 farther north than the Rochester nurseries. New York, while we are 

 one hundred and ten miles south of the Woodstock nurseries, New 

 Brnnswiek. 



Second, it has failed because men have entered upon it witliout 

 an}' knowledge of what the business required ; they have thought 

 in too many cases, that all that was necessary was to sow a few rows 

 of pumice seed and to give a little hoeing and thinning when the 

 plants were growing ; thej' have failed to peroeive that two or three 

 acres of half starved and half neglected seedling or grafted nursery 

 trees amount to nothing, that the}' have selected the wrong soil, 

 and have failed in drainage and in protection. I know of one 

 nursery that went up in three years because it was planted in a low, 

 damp place ; they were seedlings, not forced but grown slowly in a 

 fairl}' rich soil, and they nearly all winter killed in one winter, I 

 know of another nursery, abandoned several years since because 

 the soil was not suitable, it was a strong clay ; trees transplanted 

 from this soil to a rockv, gravelly loam, felt the change to be an 

 uncongenial one, and i-efused to grow for a long time. Another 

 nursery, and a large one, was abandoned or sold out a good man}' 

 years ago from a want of practical knowledge to carry it on prop- 

 erly ; some good stock, undoubtedly, was sold from that nursery, 

 and some bad stock too, and it was the bad stock that helped the 

 downfall. It will not do to sell all stock on the bare reputation of 

 the nursery, it must have an intrinsic value ; the farmer wanls some- 

 thing besides pedigree when he buys a cow, and the orchardist is 

 not to 1)lame if he is just as particular. Another nursery, and one 

 that was pretty well conducted generally, was recentl}' given up 

 because the proprietor, as he says, could not compete with western 



