172 



I am very much interested in the cultivation of 

 our native fruits, and find much valuable informa- 

 I tion in your estimable journal on the subject, and 

 think that if all your agricultural and pomological 

 friends were to give you their plans and mode of 

 proceeding, as has the Doctor before alluded to, we 

 would all be a happier and a better people. In ta- 

 king leave of the subiect, I beg the Doctor to give 

 our plan a trial. Cut your grafts jast before the 

 vines would bleed in spring, graft them immediately, 

 in the manner described, and you will have 8 or 9 

 in ten to live. Your contributor manifests so much 

 interest in his article in the culture of fruits, that 

 we would like very much to correspond with him 

 and interchange some of our varieties. 



REPLY OP " THE DISCOVERER OP THE 

 ROOTLING VINE" TO MR. HENDERSON. 



BY W. N. BARNETT. 



Your kindness, Mr. Editor, in permitting me, in 

 February, to reply to the erroneous imputations 

 which Mr. Henderson made against me in Decem- 

 i ber, has not been forgotten : and, now that he has 

 come out again, pages 106-8, endeavoring to excul- 

 pate himself from the grave charges which I 

 fastened upon him, and making further erroneous 

 statements, I feel it a duty, both to the public and 

 myself, to correct him. Though the pen he wields 

 be coarse and brazen, and the ink that flows from 

 it foul and black, the scratches and the stains are 

 not indelible. The pencil of truth will obliterate 

 the error. I propose to speak of facts alone, — the 

 rest, as not to ' our taste,' will be passed by as un- 

 worthy of notice ; for that needs no comment of 

 ours so long as he is pleased to stigmatize himself 

 as "a common gardener," and an "ungracious 

 rascal." 



In his denial of ever having " heard of" me, he 

 forgets an old customer ; forgets having mailed to 

 me, "unasked," year by year, his voluminous circu- 

 lar or catalogue ; forgets the gratuitous package sent 

 me, "unasked," with explicit information by writ- 

 ten letters to me, personally, of his doings at Jersey 

 City. In return for these kindnesses I thrust upon 

 him, "unasked," my circular, innocently supposing 

 then, that I was maihng it to an eminent propaga- 

 tor and gentleman, too. I did not abuse him pub- 

 licly for his doings. His excuse, now, for his first 

 attack upon me is, that he omitted my name and 

 address, while, at the same time, he so described 

 my circular that no one could fail to make a per- 

 r sonal application : and this was actually the case — 

 ^ for it was brought to my attention by strangers as 

 N well as friends at the time. 



On page 41, I stated that Jive of his quotations, 

 as purporting to be from my circular, were entirely 

 untrue. This he 'emphatically' denies. These are 

 the 'five,' viz: — "Taint this brilliant discovery, " 

 "a secret," "wonderful discovery," "not by the 

 beaten track trod for centuries, and detailed by a 

 galaxy of high names known to horticultural fame," 

 and "skillful discoverer." 



All this is no language of mine, but manufactured 

 expressly for the occasion by Mr. H. My circular 

 is before you, Mr. Editor, and you are at liberty to 

 publish it to confirm this statement, or it can be 

 sent to any one who chooses to examine for himself. 

 Six other mis-quotations, in which he admits that 

 he "changed the wording," are now passed over, 

 although I fail to see how they can, thus changed, 

 be quotations. 



The offer of $1000 for a hundred rootlings was a 

 bona-fide offer, ^nd so understood by those who wit- 

 nessed it. It was made to others, both before and 

 after. The audience at Messrs. Parsons' Salesrooms 

 where, alone, I ever met him, was, almost without 

 exception, composed of intelligent gentlemen — pro- 

 pagators and fruit growers, — who represented hun- 

 dreds of acres. With nearly forty of these I ex- 

 changed addresses, and many have since corres- 

 ponded. Apparently intimate with none, save Mr. 

 P.s' worthy propagator, he stood aloof from all 

 others: — and, in keeping with his characteristic 

 style, alludes to the gentlemen present as "the vul- 

 gar crowd." As to S7ieers, they must have been all 

 Ms own ! and the reply of ' budling ' and ' cuthng' 

 was from Ms own lips, (!) in answer to a question I 

 put him about 'rootling' ! ! 



Mr. H. accuses me of being of an economical turn, 

 because T condensed in a "half-sheet" circular what 

 he has not yet, in all the pages Jie has written, been 

 able to refute. Had he intimated to me at the time 

 that the offer of $10 each, for a hundred penny 

 roothngs was not liberal enough to one so fond of 

 "gardening for profit," I would cheerfully have 

 doubled the offer. 'Tis true that it does appear 

 'economical' to raise hardy rootlings for "a penny 

 apiece," when it is estimated to cost ten times that 

 to handle tender vines "under glass." On this score 

 we plead guilty, and are reaping the fruits of it, — 

 on the one hand by a ' random shot ' from Mr. H. ; 

 on the other by liberal encouragement from an ap- 

 preciative public. 



Mr. H. mistakes my allusion to insects. He will 

 find my opinion of "thrips" pubUshed in the Coun- 

 try Gentleman for March. He insists that I mean 

 what I have expressly said I disbelieved,— in refer- 

 ence to the " sole cause " of paralyzing vines. He 



