AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
51 
varieties succeed best, and come earliest into 
bearing 1 I see the American Pomological So¬ 
ciety recommend the Garden Royale apple for gar¬ 
den culture. In what way—as a dwarf or stand¬ 
ard 1 What are its peculiar merits ! Is this the 
Pomme royale of the catalogues 1 According to 
my arithmetic, at eight feet apart an acre will 
contain 680 trees, or at ten feet apart, 436 trees. 
Now if a durable, fruitful, dwarf apple plantation 
can be secured in three or four years, it must 
pay. Can this be done ? Will dwarf apples pay ? 
That’s the question. I call for light. Your arti¬ 
cles last year on the grape and strawberry paid 
me more than three times the subscription price, 
and here is a chance for you or some of your 
correspondents to greatly increase my obliga¬ 
tions.—[Somebody please do so. Ed.] 
By the way, I see in Sept., Vol. 17, p. 276, a 
notice of a native white strawberry. You may 
be interested to learn that we have two distinct 
varieties of them here. (N. B.—No postage 
stamps hinted at in this.) One variety grows 
only in the woods or in the shade of fences 
near the woods; tall foot-stalk, slim foliage, 
with an appearance of varnish on the leaves ; 
berry small, soft, with a flashy taste. The other 
kind flourishes in pastures and meadows only; 
foot-stalk short, leaves broad, dull green ; berry 
large, sweet, of a cream white, with prominent 
yellow seeds. This was the largest wild berry 
sent to our village market the past season. This 
variety appears to be multiplying very rapidly, 
I am testing both varieties in my garden, and if 
they prove to be of special worth, I will send 
you some of the plants. Here endeth the first 
offence of this Pod Auger. 
Frauds and Mistakes of Nurserymen- 
Not a season passes, in which we do not hear 
complaints of trickery or gross errors committed 
by venders of trees. Says one man : “ I ordered 
five Rebecca grapes of -, paying fancy 
prices for them, and after waiting two years for 
the little starvelings to show their first cluster, 
they turned out to be the second-rate Clinton 
grape.” And another : “ I ordered a lot ol first- 
class cherry-trees, apples and pears, and orna¬ 
mental trees from a distant nursery, and on re¬ 
ceiving them by express, I found nearly half of 
them dried up, the limbs broken, the roots in 
taking them up, had been chopped off withii a 
few inches of the trunk, and altogether they 
were a sorry sight. When the cherries came into 
bearing, part of them proved to be only bitter lit¬ 
tle mazzards; the apples, many of them, wore 
untrue to their names, and the ornamental tiens 
were a long time in becoming ornamental ” 
Such occurrences are so frequent, that some per¬ 
sons have come to regard nurserymen as a set of 
sharpers, and many are so afraid of imposition 
that they go to the trouble of raising their own 
seedlings and grafting and budding their own 
fruit. 
Undoubtedly, there are dishonest nurserymen, 
as well as dishonest men in other callings. With 
them, indeed, there is a strong temptation to de¬ 
fraud, in that the gain is immediate, and the dis¬ 
honesty cannot generally be detected under sev¬ 
eral years. Tree-peddlers are more likely to be en¬ 
snared by this temptation than established nur¬ 
serymen whose success in business depends upon 
careful and faithful dealing, and is sure to follow 
it. There is not so much dishonesty among nur¬ 
serymen as is sometimes supposed. What are 
often called frauds, are only mistakes, which they 
regret and in most cases will try to make good. 
These mistakes oft°n occur in ways like these : 
A young nurseryman wishing to stock his 
ground speedily with certain kinds of fruit, sends 
to an older establishment at a distance for speci¬ 
men trees, and, taking for granted their correct¬ 
ness, begins forthwith to bud and engraft his 
seedlings from them. Next year, he sells the 
young trees by the thousand, and the same thing 
is repeated next year, on a larger scale. But in 
a few years he begins to receive letters from in¬ 
dignant customers all over the land, complaining 
of fraud and injustice: he has sent out vile and 
worthless trash, causing a loss of time and money 
and patience to his purchasers! Now where was 
the dishonesty 1 There was none : it was simply 
carelessness in not first proving the trees from 
which he propagated. Yet it was a highly culpa¬ 
ble carelessness. 
Some foreign nurserymen are less conscientious 
in their business than American dealers. Several 
years ago a gentleman in New-York, having been 
frequently imposed upon by a certain French nur¬ 
seryman, determined to show up his character 
effectually; and so he invented a list of trees 
such as no mortal had ever heard of, and ordered 
them. Forthwith his order was filled under those 
very names 1 What Yankee nurseryman ever 
did the like of that! We understand that Euro¬ 
pean dealers have lately found out that Americans 
are not all ignorant savages, and that it is worth 
their while to treat them so as to retain their large 
custom. 
Some of the so-called “frauds and mistakes of 
nurserymen” should be charged over to the pur¬ 
chaser. Some men order trees without knowing 
much about them, and then are disappointed be¬ 
cause they don’t realize their expectations. Others 
suffer their young trees to be browsed off by cat¬ 
tle, or to be otherwise broken down, so that the 
stock grows up instead of the graft. Others, 
again, give their trees such poor soil and tillage 
that the result is almost a total failure. 
Then, the tree-peddlers, before mentioned, must 
take a share of the blame. Many of them are 
honest and worthy men, but not all. These last, 
with an eye to a fine speculation, gather up the 
catalogues of respectable nurserymen, and a lot 
of highly colored pictures of fruits and flowers, 
and go about the country, representing them¬ 
selves as the agents of these establishments, or 
even partners in the business, and by much fair 
speech and large promises effect great sales. But 
it generally turns out that the trees they furnish 
are only the refuse stock of various unknown 
nurseries, bought for a song and sold at full or 
even higher prices ; and it often proves that they 
are untrue to their names, if not mere wildlings. 
Such peddlers seldom travel twice in the same 
track : it would be hardly safe for them to do so. 
Yet, the country is full of just such men ; and it 
becomes prudent people to look out for them. 
We must be allowed to say here, that the per¬ 
sons who get most sadly imposed upon in this 
way are, generally, those who do not patronize 
well established nurseries near home. The pic¬ 
tures, the showy catalogues, the distant nur¬ 
sery and the brazen assurance of the peddler, are 
too much for them. The only safe way is to let 
these itinerants alone, unless they can give satis¬ 
factory evidence of honesty. 
Meanwhile, it becomes nurserymen to exercise 
increasing care in all the details of their business, 
so that fewer mistakes shall occur. For every 
mistake is likely to make an enemy of the cus¬ 
tomer, and to injure the reputation of the nur¬ 
sery wherever it i’s known. 
Note. —To the above, written by an associate 
editor, we will add, that a subscriber recently 
wrote a strong protest against our frequent on¬ 
slaught against the peddlers. We have not his 
protest before us, but the substance of it was, that 
he had sold many good trees all over the coun¬ 
try, to the great convenience of purchasers, who 
were thus saved the necessity of ordering of dis¬ 
tant nurserymen, or going a long distance to se¬ 
lect trees. He also stated that he had been the 
means of introducing fruit trees upon a great 
number of farms, where, but for his efforts, they 
would never have gone. There is much trutt 
in what he says, so far as he is personally con¬ 
cerned, but his case is one of the few honorable 
exceptions. We could name not a few persons 
who would hardly dare to be seen in a neighbor¬ 
hood where they had sold trees a few years pre¬ 
viously.— Ed. 
-«*-. - —. -- 
Starting Seeds Early. 
Rev. Daniel Emerson, Summit Co., 0., writes 
that he has been successful in giving garden 
seeds an early start, in the following manner : 
Having selected the quantity needed, each sort is 
tied by itself in a cloth, the name being plainly 
written on a slip of paper, and inclosed with the 
seed. The packages are then buried about two 
inches deep in the ground, for a week or two. 
When ready to plant, the kinds needed for plant¬ 
ing are taken from the bags and used. They 
will be found to have swelled, perhaps sprouted, 
and ready to grow. If the ground should be 
quite dry, it is best to water the drills after drop¬ 
ping the seed, and then cover with dry earth. 
Mr. E. says that by this plan he has never failed 
to raise plants from every seed planted, though 
when put out they were often sprouted. If each 
seed is placed where it is wanted to grow, it will 
save the labor of thinning, though many prefer to 
thin their rows, leaving the most prominent 
plants to grow. 
-g® ft Mnaa ^ B— ' » C s*- 
To Preserve Scarlet Geraniums in Winter. 
Mr. Downing once said, in the Horticulturist, 
that the various scarlet Geraniums could be kept 
through the Winter, by simply taking them up in 
the Fall and hanging them by the heels in a 
cellar. For persons who have no green-house, 
and yet wish these Geraniums for border plants 
in Summer, this would be an important fact, if it 
were a fact. The writer questions il. On the 
strength of Mr. D.’s recommendation, we, a year 
since, took in our geraniums from the garden, and 
treated them as he directed. In the Spring, not 
one of them was alive. Mr. D., seldom made 
such mistakes. Perhaps, if the top had oeen cut 
off pretty close, and the roots buried in sand, 
they would have lived. If any of our readers 
have any light on this subject, will the/ please 
let it shine. 
Speaking of the preservation of roots in Win¬ 
ter, reminds us to say that the bulbs of the Tiger 
Flower are favorite morsels for mice, ana should 
be kept in a box of sand where these pests can 
not reach them. Dahlias are their abhorrence, 
and Gladioli and Madeira vines please them not, 
but for these Mexican plants they have a great 
passion. 
Franklin seized lightning, held it fast, and 
tamed it. Morse clothed it, taught it to read and 
write, and go on errands. 
The man who is afraid to be called a coward 
has no apprehension of genuine courage. 
He that goes borrowing, goes sorrowing. 
