AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
211 
' They admire gay colors and sweet odors as 
most savages do, and that is the extent of then’ 
taSte for flowers. They have no other measure 
of value than money, and as flowers in the 
country do not sell in market, they have no 
value. A pound of butter brings twenty cents, 
and is worth the money. A rose, though it af¬ 
fords pleasure to the eye, and to the smell, and 
gratifies our love of the beautiful, brings no 
price, and is therefore worth nothing. 
It is pretty much so with fruits, though there 
is a little more conscience about stealing them, 
for fruit has a money value, though it be small. 
Apples are common even among these rude peo¬ 
ple ; but they are of the ungrafted sorts, and 
hardly pay to carry to market where the better 
sorts are known. But they think their neighbors 
prize fine pears, grapes, and the smaller fruits as 
little as they do their seedling apples. It was 
only yesterday that I found a woman and her 
two children in my strawberry beds, helping 
themselves as leisurely as if they had been pick¬ 
ing in a cow pasture. They had brought their 
baskets with them, and had got them nearly 
filled, when I had to lay down the law to them. 
They had at least a dollar’s worth of my prop¬ 
erty, and were about to walk off with it. 
Now I don’t want to say a word agin’ Hook- 
ertown, or damage the reputation of the place, 
I suppose it is a full average of Connecticut 
towns, and in some respects a good deal better. 
But to speak the plain truth, there is a good 
deal of stealing among us in this small way. 
And it can’t be laid to the door of the pulpit 
neither. Mr. Spooner is faithful—preaches to¬ 
tal depravity just as hard as if people did not 
illustrate that doctrine themselves—warns, en¬ 
treats and expostulates with all long-suffering 
and patience. But you see the most of these 
people don’t come to meeting, and the preaching 
that is going to reach them, I guess, will have to 
be in men’s lives rather than in meeting houses. 
The notion that nothing is of any value unless 
it will sell, seems to lie at the bottom of a good 
deal of this wickedness, and I think a word or 
two ought to be said upon it. Now this may be 
true' with a great many people. They are so 
mean that they would skin flints to make money. 
But among decent Christian people this can’t be 
so. A man prizes a good many things that have 
no money value, far more than if he could turn 
them into gold. There is an old lap stone, such 
as shoemakers use, in my garret, that belonged 
to Sally’s grandfather. He used to use it, and 
when she was a little child she remembers see¬ 
ing the old man pound leather on it. Now I 
don’t suppose the stone would sell for a red cent, 
but Sally says she would not part with it for the 
KoliinOor diamond, and all the crown jewels 
of Victoria. She is an honest woman, and I am 
bound to believe her. Anything that our affec¬ 
tions enter into has a value that can not be 
measured by dollars and cents; and to rob us 
of these things is to do us a greater injury than 
to steal sheep and horses. I can’t blame Seth 
Twiggs for raving about his lilac bush. His 
wife planted it and had a right to rejoice in it. 
It was rather hard to see the growth of years 
destroyed in a moment by an ignorant boor. 
We cultivate flowers and learn to love them 
for their beauty, and for the pleasure they give 
our wives and children. They cost consider¬ 
abletime and money, and really give more pleas¬ 
ure than many things that cost ten times as 
much. They are associated with our leisure 
hours, and our domestic enjoyments. They 
seem to belong to the better side of our natures. 
We have a moss rose under our bed-room 
window that little Sally planted when she was 
a school girl. It hangs full of blossoms every 
year—not worth a cent. But I declare I had 
rather lose a half dozen of the best Ripple trees 
in my orchard than that worthless shrub. 
It is very much so With our nice garden fruits. 
We raise them because we can’t buy them in 
the country, and don’t want to beg or steal them. 
I cultivate grapes and pears, and get a good deal 
interested in the vines and trees. I spend days 
in training them, and enjoy my power over them. 
They have a value to me above the market 
price, because they are the product of my skill. 
I have watched that bunch of grapes from its 
blossom to the purple bloom upon its ripened 
berries. I have watched those ruddy cheeked 
pears quite as anxiously, and anticipated the de¬ 
light of setting them before my friends, when 
they pay me a visit. When the friends are 
gathered for the feast, it is a sore vexation and 
disappointment to find the fruit missing. We 
need more efficient laws to protect us against 
fruit and flower thieves, and above all a wider 
diffusion of a taste for these things, which will 
prove the best safeguard against their loss. 
Hookertown, ) Yours to command, 
Jvne 14 th, .1862. J Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
Horticulture Artificial. 
A young farmer writes us that he thinks 
nearly all the operations of horticulture artifi¬ 
cial. They interrupt and prevent nature’s laws 
and processes, and so induce disease, decay and 
death. He inveighs against pruning, grafting, 
budding, cutting off the tap-root of seedling 
trees, manuring, etc. Why not allow trees to 
grow naturally, and vines to clamber unrestrain¬ 
ed over tree-tops and hedge-rows, and all to get 
along without any extra fertilization ? There 
is a grain of truth in our young friend’s theory, 
but hardly enough to keep it ballasted. 
As to the tap-root; suppose we did not cut it 
off while small, in the nursery row, who could 
transplant the tree when it had grown a few 
years ? The tap-root would be far down on 
the road to China, and the side-roots would be 
very small. As to budding and grafting, it is 
very true that crab-apples, choke-pears, and 
other wild fruit will answer to keep men from 
starving, but they will not quite satisfy the com¬ 
mon wants of civilized people. As long as graft¬ 
ing will give us a plenty of Seckels and Northern 
Spys, very naturally we shall try to get them, 
“ unnatural ” as the process may be. 
As to pruning and training, doubtless this is 
sometimes overdone, but perhaps it is as often 
wholly neglected. Some kinds of shade trees 
take a very straggling, lop-sided habit, and need 
a little improvement in then - manners. Some 
fruit-trees make excessive wood-growth, and 
need a little cutting back, at the proper time, to 
induce fruitfulness. Of course, we could have 
no hedges, without the pruning-shears. The 
grape vine would yield us only small, second- 
rate fruit, if we allowed it to run wild on the 
trees; but it gives us more and better fruit, if 
confined to the trellis; and certainly it is easier 
to gather. A pasture or hay field is all well in 
its place, but a smooth lawn, well graded, mown 
and rolled, is a far finer sight for the neighbor¬ 
hood of the house. A gravelled walk, a bed of 
flowers, or even a cornfield, all are artificial. 
And so we might go on; but our friend will 
not need further argument or illustration. Near¬ 
ly all our agricultural and horticultural opera¬ 
tions are artificial, but no reasonable man con¬ 
demns them for that. Yea, even our moral vir¬ 
tues are artificial, in the sense of being “ contra¬ 
ry to nature,” but we prize them none the less 
for that. Rather, are we profoundly thankful 
to the Great Husbandman whose loving care 
has grafted them upon the wild olive tree. 
Skilled Labor for the Garden. 
There are some who, for various reasons, can 
not or will not work. They must depend chief¬ 
ly on hired labor. And if they wanted only the 
plainest kind of work done, this could be easily 
got along with, for there are scores of laborers 
at every comer waiting to do this. But when it 
comes to such work as planting hedges a'nd 
training them, pruning grape-vines and pear- 
trees, laying out flower-gardens and setting out 
shrubs and plants, how few laborers can be 
trusted! The good natured merchant directs 
Patrick, in the morning, to set out a few rows 
of dwarf-pears, and several grape-vines, and 
then goes to his place of business, flattering 
himself during the day that all is going on well. 
But on coming home, at evening, he discovers 
that the rows are as crooked as a rail-fence, and 
on examination finds the roots of his vines and 
trees jammed into little post-holes, then covered 
with soil, and spatted down very smoothly! 
“ ’Faith, sir, that’s the way I ush’t to do it when 
I was head-gar-r-dner to the Duke of Devon¬ 
shire.”—And so it goes, day after day bringing 
its several blunders, until the poor man is wor¬ 
ried almost to distraction. 
In all our villages and large towns, there arc 
many families who are unable or disinclined to 
keep regular and permanent hired men, and yet 
have more or less gardening to do all through 
the Summer. They want their seeds sown in 
the Spring, then their hedges trimmed, or their 
grass-plot mowed, and their gravel walks 
cleaned. Widow Smith wants her lot in the 
cemetery put in order; Dr. Jones must have his 
grape-vines pruned and tied up. Nearly all of 
these persons know little about gardening, or 
have not the time to superintend it. 
Plainly, then, We want not only laborers, but 
skilled laborers,—men with brains as well as 
muscle, and with both brains and muscles trained 
to do a specific kind of work. Were we better 
supplied with such workmen, our country homes 
would be managed with more ease, and with 
greater satisfaction to their owners. The pro¬ 
fessional or the business man could then go to 
his daily employment feeling that his garden 
and lawn will not be spoiled during, his absence. 
Our grounds would rise to a higher point of ex¬ 
cellence in their arrangement and keeping. 
How best to multiply such a class of laborers, 
we hardly know. They must be trained some¬ 
where, for they do not grow spontaneously. In 
the commercial nurseries, and large gardens 
near cities, and on the finest country-places of 
the land, there are many young men who, by a 
little pains on the part of their parents or over¬ 
seers, might soon be trained into intelligent, 
skillful gardeners. If then, they should adver¬ 
tise in the leading agricultural and horticultural 
papers, they would surely find lucrative places. 
Would that many young laborers, now content 
to do only the commonest kinds of field work, 
would learn the art of gardening. It is an hon¬ 
orable, pleasant and profitable employment. 
The result even then would be that more lucra¬ 
tive places would offer so freely to this class, 
that the want we allude to would still go un¬ 
supplied. The only remedy after all, 1 seems to be 
a diffusion of practical knowledge of gardening 
among all educated people, affording them en¬ 
joyment, exercise, and ability to direct laborers. 
