60 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Feb. 
THE ORCHARD AND THE FRUIT GARDEN. 
DAVID THOMAS’ ADDRESS. 
We have been favored with a copy of the Address, 
delivered in September last, before the Aurora Hortir 
cultural Society, by David Thomas, its president. The 
author of this address, as is well known, has long stood 
among the first of practical, skilful, and scientific horti¬ 
culturists in our country. His collection of bearing fruit 
trees, has, for many years, been one of the finest in the 
State. Hence he speaks from abundant practical knowl¬ 
edge, in the address before us, which is entirely confined 
to remarks on the culture of fruit. A few extracts can¬ 
not fail' to prove interesting to our readers, though com¬ 
prising but a small part of the valuable matter it con¬ 
tains: 
“ It was the custom in former times, whenever a 
finer fruit tree appeared in full bearing, for the neigh¬ 
bors to gather round,—some civilly asking for a share 
as friends , some taking it boldly as robbers, and some 
stealthily as thieves. May we congratulate ourselves 
on some improvement in our day ? 
u How many of the inhabitants of this blessed land of 
ours—under such glorious skies—raise any thing of the 
kind better than the old pie cherry, or the sour morello ? 
than the horse plum or the little damson ? How many 
feast, during the proper season, on apricots, the better 
class of peaches, and on the Seckel and vergalieu pears ? 
There is not one in a hundred—probably not one in a 
thousand—who has a full supply of the finer fruits. 
u In bringing about a better state of things, however, 
there arc many difficulties to encounter. Trees cannot 
be had without some exertion ; we may be cheated with 
spurious kinds, or they may die in transplanting ; they 
may be infected by disease, or infested by insects ; the 
fruit when young may be destroyed by frost, or when 
ripe, by plunderers ; and under a view of all these dis¬ 
couragements, would it not be better and cheaper to 
buy our fruit? Here let us pause a moment, and ask, 
Of whom could we buy ? If all the fine fruit of the 
•country was divided amongst us, we should have so lit¬ 
tle, and that little so dear, (apricots three cents apiece 
at Rochester,) that we should only be tantalized, and 
never satisfied. No—to have plenty, we must raise it 
ourselves. 
u The first step, then, is to select the best kinds ; and 
on this point we cannot be too careful. Differences of 
climate, even on some hardy sorts, is very great ; and 
three degrees of latitude may produce more than three 
degrees of flavor ; so that the excellent somewhere else, 
may not be excellent here. As an instance : the Bezi 
de la Motte pear is very fine at Philadelphia, while 
with us, it is unsuited to human lips in four seasons out 
of five. Let me give another instance : From nearly 
twenty kinds of peaches—fine on the sands of New Jer¬ 
sey, whence I procured them—I shall not have more 
than three or four well suited to this distinct. But 
what a loss we sustain in trying such experiments! It 
is far better to get such sorts of high character as have 
been fully proved to be adapted to this particular cli¬ 
mate, though the trees may be obtained from the south, 
.cast, or west.’’ 
11 Flavor , 'productiveness , and size, are three points of 
the greatest importance in the character of fruit. At 
the head stands flavor —for without it fruit is worthless. 
Next stands productiveness —for if the tree is a poor 
bearer, it is of little value. Size is the third in impor¬ 
tance ; and still lower down in the scale is beauty, in¬ 
cluding shape and color. Many cultivators, however, 
reverse this order, recommending large and showy sorts, 
chiefly because they are large and showy. The Monthly 
Reviewer once wittily said, 1 1 prefer a peach to a 
pumpkin ;’ and I conclude that a similar preference has 
prevailed when I see small varieties cultivated. This 
is finely illustrated by the Seckel pear—small, but .very 
superior.” 
“ In times past, it was difficult for an amateur in ma¬ 
ny cases to know what sorts he had in his garden—for 
nurserymen themselves often knew not what they were 
propagating. I have purchased bundles of trees, where 
not one-half of them proved true to their names. In¬ 
deed, it could scarcely be otherwise, from the course 
then pursued. A tree, perhaps, was procured from 
some distant nursery, and propagated to a great extent 
without waiting to see the fruit. If worthless, as it 
often happened, the amount of injury was very great, as 
scions were frequently carried hundreds of miles. I re¬ 
member the first bundle that I obtained from a great 
nursery. So confident was I that all was right, and so 
eager to have such fine sorts widely scattered, that I 
invited my friends and neighbors to call and procure 
cuttings, little, suspecting that a part were spurious, 
and a part suffering from a malignant disease. The 
cost, the care, and the labor, however, all went for no¬ 
thing ; and I felt, as hundreds of pomologists have felt 
in its true force, what the preacher meant by 1 vexation 
of spirit.’ 
u Among the ways in which blunders of this kind oc¬ 
cur, is that' of trusting to careless assistants, instead of 
the proprietor’s seeing to the business himself. To cut 
a graft from the wrong part of a tree, or to take up a 
young tree from the wrong row—is not very uncom¬ 
mon ;' and serious losses are often the result. Once I 
brought home with me from a distance of more than 
four hundred miles, a tree kindly presented to me as a 
treasure ;■ but a servant was sent to take it up, and got 
one that was spurious. Somehow—perhaps in this 
way—the late President Knight scattered an inferior 
variety, in place of his famous Monarch pear ; and he 
estimated the vexation and damage at more than ten 
thousand pounds sterling;” 
REMARKS ON BUDDING. 
In the October number of the Cultivator, for 1846, a 
correspondent at Prospect, Conn., gives us some account 
of his experiments in budding, the past summer. As I 
have in former years, repeatedly tried all the experi¬ 
ments there detailed, it may perhaps be interesting and 
useful to give the results. 
With regard to the time of budding, the remarks in 
that communication are mainly correct. I have never 
found any advantage in deferring budding after the end 
of the summer months, though peaches and sometimes 
apples, maybe budded very early in September, provided 
the season is warm and moist, so as to continue the rapid 
growth of the stocks; for as soon as stocks cease to 
grow, the operator may as well hang up his fiddle at 
once. In some seasons, I have known the majority of 
buds to fail, when inserted as late as the middle of Au¬ 
gust; in others, I have had good success as late as the 
middle of September. What was the reason ? In the 
former case, the stocks were not thrifty, and their growth 
had been almost wholly arrested by drouth. In the 
other, the soil was rich, the trees vigorous, and the sea¬ 
son warm and wet , so as to keep up the growth in vigor¬ 
ous state. It however rarely happens that any budding is 
