68 STATE PPMOLOQICAL SOCIETY. 



These abuses are not confined to our own section, but have 

 been prevalent in all parts of the land wherever the foot of 

 the tree agerit has strayed. 



Mv. C. ^y. Garfield, Secretary of the ^Michigan Agricultural 

 College, in an address on the apple orchard, delivered before 

 a farmers' institute in that State two years ago, said : "Trees 

 should be purchased, if possible, at the nursery where they 

 are grown, and the nearer home the better. Those who simply 

 deal in trees are usually unprincipled men. In truth, the 

 terms tree dealer and liar are getting to be interchangeable 

 ones." 



Mr. J. H. Putnam, of Grafton, Vt., in an essay on apple 

 culture, delivered before the Board of Agriculture, Manufac- 

 tures and Mining, of that State, shows how the omnipresent 

 tree dealer was appreciated in that section two years ago. He 

 says : " Let me not be understood as condemning the whole 

 race of tree peddlet^s ; they are not all of them necessarily 

 unmitigated scoundrels. A man may travel about the country 

 selling trees and at the same time be honest, but it is an in- 

 disputable fact, tliat people have sometimes been woefully 

 bitten. Selling a new, unproved variety of grapes at five 

 dollars per plant, and furnishing a poor plant at that ; selling 

 the Tetofsky apple at one dollar per tree, and making folks 

 believe the scion with which the tree was grafted came from 

 Russia ; selling people an endless variety of trees, many of 

 which are in no wise adapted to the locality, and which with 

 the best treatment will never prove profitable ; promising to 

 furnish first class trees ; going to the large commercial nur- 

 series of the West, and buying the refuse trees which the 

 nursery-men will not send out themselves, and with these 

 filling their orders, — these are a few of the sins of some tree 

 agents, which the whole class are in a measure unjustly 

 obliged to answer for." 



The foregoing is a truthful and fair comment upon the class 

 of abuses to which I have at some length referred, and will 

 be endorsed by all who know the ways of the tree dealing 

 profession. 



