TARRYTOWN LETTERS— III. 



CUTTING TREES TO SETTLE 



THANKSGIVING SUPPER SOME RANK HERESY ON BUDDING AND GRAFT- 

 ING MRS. TARRYER AS POMONA A NEW METHOD WITH TREE AGENTS- 



A parson's GRAFTING. 



OME, BOYS ! " said Mrs. 

 Tarryer, after Thanks- 

 giving supper, "get 

 your tools, and let's 

 see if we can't find 

 two or three shrubby 

 trees fit to dig for 

 planting in the nurs- 

 ery, around the bushy 

 trunks of the wild apple tree we have been eating 

 the fruit of with so much satisfaction. Let's have 

 one more thing to be tfiankful for — apple-trees on 

 their own roots. Go get your tools and I will go 

 with you ; a walk will settle my supper." 



Presently five tall young men, surrounding their 

 leader, turned down the corner into the meadow to- 

 wards a certain hedge-row, where a young seedling 

 tree has distinguished itself by filling three barrels 

 with fair apples this wormy season. Every one 

 who has tasted them wanted more. 



She despises budding and grafting above ground, 

 and so did her ancestors before her. She says 

 those artificial tricks would never have been prac- 

 ticed, at the rate we have run them by wholesale, 

 except during the darkest ages of American garden- 

 ing, when nothing was sacred from light-fingered 

 manipulations. One of her griefs in going to the 

 neighbors, is that she finds no such piquant variety 

 of fruit as the old orchards were full of, but the 

 same formal trade trash, all alike distasteful, from 

 house to house, and never anything racy of our 

 own soil. And while she knows we might do better, 

 it vexes her to see the places of honor and profit 

 at our little country parties given to figs, bananas, 

 oranges and grapes — all imported. 



"Too far from the original root," is her remark 

 about the tough-skinned fruit she sees in market, 

 "You can use scions one or two removes from the 

 native tree without much loss of quality, but after 

 that degradation is rapid. And what frightens 

 me" she says, "is to see people growing up and 

 taking charge of our affairs without the sense of 

 taste to notice whither our progress is tending." 

 By a long correspondence concerning a barrel of 



extra red, tender, white-fleshed, juicy and spicy 

 Baldwins from Michigan, she proved they were pro- 

 pagated within a cut or two of the original Massa- 

 chusetts tree and had rooted from the scion. She 

 repeated these investigations in several other quar- 

 ters — with an industry worthy of a director of small 

 experiment station, and with similar results ! At one 

 of our winter-meetings she exhibited a bushel of in- 

 dubitable Baldwins, yellow as Bellflowers ; ditto of 

 green ones, each sort respectively selected from two 

 lots at our grocers. Both were bitter, tough and 

 corky, with the worst characteristics of the Bald- 

 win predominant. She stood by her show for 

 hours and talked — giving away the two bushels of 

 degraded specimens and also a couple of bushels 

 more of superb reds from a certain local orchard 

 whose honeyed juice sticks to the fingers so that 

 guests need a chance to wash after eating them. 

 These last she knows were grafted from near the 

 parent stock. Very few people understand that all 

 our good apples were once natural fruit seedlings. 



Likewise the R. I. Greening — that heartiest and 

 most satisfactory of after-dinner apples, under the 

 waist-band — has been shockingly maltreated by its 

 manufacturers. You should see Mrs. Tarryer, in 

 the courage of her convictions, explaining the Green- 

 ing decadence to a dubious fruit committee at an 

 agricultural fair ; with the toe of her little boot 

 slightly projecting from her trim fitting gown of 

 black stuff, and one of those bogus Greenings bal- 

 anced on the tips of her thumb and fingers, where 

 everybody can see it. " That is the kind of apples 

 we grow to sell — not to eat, gentlemen. It has what 

 we call "good Jiandliiig qualities" — giving it a 

 little bound on the table between the plates and 

 catching it again to prove it. ' ' The old flat Green- 

 ing, when you find it, will be all green till it begins to 

 ripen and then it will grow yellow with the matur- 

 ing sugar. It should always be tart, however, and 

 never what you call mellow, but melting. 



"We produce this kind of apple to ship, gentle- 

 men. We can ship it to New York, and from there 

 we can ship it to Hartford, Springfield and Boston, 

 looking for big fools enough to buy it. On many 



