30 PETER HENDERSON, 



the value of the book was augmented by this plan. Quite 

 a portion of this book is taken up by Mr. Henderson's indi- 

 vidual cultural directions on certain vegetable and fruit 

 crops which can be advantageously .grown on the farm. 

 This completes his work as a writer of books, but it does 

 not begin to cover the multitude of his miscellaneous 

 articles which, beginning years before he wrote Garden- 

 ing for Profit he kept continually writing until a week 

 before his death. 



Another field in which he was always the, pioneer, 

 and where he did yeoman's work for the general good of 

 the profession, was his exposure of horticultural hum- 

 bugs, which in some guise or other are continually 

 cropping up. One of the best examples of his work in 

 this line, and where, in order to get at all particulars, he 

 assumed the role of a detective, was his exposure of two 

 French worthies, well known in New York a few years 

 ago as the " Blue Rose Men." This pair had -opened a 

 store in Broadway, New York, where they had displayed 

 on the walls colored illustrations of the most impossible 

 flowers and fruits. For instance they showed a tree on 

 which strawberries were growing as big as oranges, 

 peaches almost the size of musk-melons, dahlia flowers 

 of a celestial blue, etc. When Mr. Henderson arrived, 

 one of the voluble proprietors was just dismissing a de- 

 lighted old lady who had bought five dollars worth of 

 asparagus seeds, at a cent a piece, warranted to produce 

 shoots an inch in diameter, in three months from the 

 time of sowing. Mr. Henderson stood, looking in rapt 

 admiration before a colored plate of blue moss roses, which 

 attracted the attention of the polite French salesman, and 

 on the price being asked, he brought forth from under the 

 counter, three plants, representing them to be moss roses, 

 which, by the way, were all alike, and were all our com- 

 mon prairie rose. As Mr. Henderson tells the story, the 

 following conversation then ensued. The Frenchman 

 said, "This one he only bloom once, I tell you the truth, 

 so I sell him for two dollar; this one, he be the remontant, 

 he bloom twice — ^just twice — I sell him for three dollar ; 



