128 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
TREE AGEIST’S TALE. 
Dissected by a Prominent Horticultural Practitioner—A Series 
of Statements and Counter Statements in which Nursery¬ 
men and Their Agents are Interested—Professor 
Bailey Tells “What to Say Bach.” 
Buy first-class trees of reliable dealers, says Professor L. H. 
Bailey in the Rural New Yorker. It rarely pays to try to save 
a few cents on a tree, for quality is likely to be sacrificed. At 
the present time, nursery stock is so cheap, that one need not 
quibble about prices. Agents who represent reliable nurser¬ 
ies, and who bring proper credentials are to be trusted ; but 
there are irresponsible scamps traveling over the country who 
sell most astonishing stock. They are usually plausible 
fellows, and they have the knack of weaving a few slender 
threads of science into a fabric of which the warp and woof are 
credulity and humbug. A correspondent who was visited by 
an enterprising agent, sends me the following account, the 
statements in which would cause Ananias to burn with envy : 
“ A representative of a nursery was in to sell me some trees. 
He says that yellows (i) and black-knot (2) are caused by a 
lack of vitality ; that the fruits, not being indigenous to this 
country, have run out (3); that nurserymen get their seed from 
the canning factory and cider-press, and hence get seed from 
diseased trees which produce their kind, i. e., dressed stocks, 
which they graft without regard to kind or quality (4). He 
says that a sweet apple ought not to be grafted upon a sour 
apple stock, or a colored apple upon a light apple, and vice 
versa, or a yellow peach upon a white peach stock (5), etc.; 
that if they are, they produce mongrels and not their kind (6). 
In fact, he says that fruit should not be grafted but budded 
(7) ; that wood never grows to wood, and that the wood of the 
end of the graft often decays, and this decay is communicated 
to the heart of the tree, which becomes black throughout its 
whole length and does not grow well and dies in a few years 
(8) . He says that a plum or cherry tree that has black-knot 
on the limbs, also has it on its roots, and the whole tree is 
affected, as is proved by the blackened heart (9); and that it is 
due to deterioration and is not parasitic. Another result of this 
deterioration, he says, is the thinning of the sap by an excess 
of water; that tree sap will not freeze until the mercury falls 
to 28 degrees below zero, but that the thin sap (which also 
more readily rises) freezes at 10 or 12 degrees higher, hence 
fruit is often winter-killed which would not be if the trees had 
sufficient vitality to produce good sap (10). He says that his 
nursery and only two others in the United States import their 
peach seeds from Persia, their apple from Russia, their plum 
and cherry from Germany, which are the natural habitats of 
these fruits (n); that they bud a sweet apple upon a sweet, a 
sour upon a sour, a red upon a red, a late upon a late, and the 
same way with peaches and other fruits, as nearly as they can, 
the kind upon the same kind (12); that a man does not breed 
a race horse to a draught horse, or a Short-horn to a Jersey, 
if he expects good stock ; so with fruit (13). By getting their 
seed from the home of the fruit, they escape the disease caus¬ 
ed. by a removal to a strange country, and inbreeding and 
diseased seed (14). By budding they get a better union than 
by graft, and hence get a hardier tree which grows faster, 
lives longer and is not so easily winter-killed (15); by breed¬ 
ing similar kinds together, they get better fruit and truer to 
name, and as their trees are hardy, they are thrifty and bear 
early, the apple at eight years and the peach at four or six 
years from the seed (16).” 
I have numbered the various statements, that I may hang 
them on the girdle of Mephisto. 1. Peach yellows is believed 
by all the best authorities to be a specific disease. 2. Black- 
knot is known to be the result of the attack of a fungus. 3. 
Fruits do not run out because of mere transfer to another 
country, or because they are not indigenous to a country. 
4. Of course, stocks are grafted without regard to their kind 
or quality, because there is no way of telling what kind or 
quality of fruit they will bear until they begin to bear ! When 
they begin to bear, they are too old to make into nursery 
stocks. There is no reason for saying that, because seeds 
come from canning factories and cider mills, they are diseased. 
Run-wild trees, as well as cultivated ones, may be diseased. 
With the possible exception of peach yellows, there is, proba¬ 
bly, no common disease of tree fruits which is transmitted to 
the offspring through the seeds. 5. A mere sophistry. 6. 
The scientific world is waiting for proofs of just such hybridity 
as this. 7. There is no essential difference between budding 
and grafting. Some methods of grafting are to be condemned 
in certain cases, but no man can safely make such a sweeping 
comparison. 8. Has enough truth to mislead. Old or heart- 
wood does not grow again. It does not heal. The callus 
covers it. If decay sets in, the decay may extend far into the 
heart, for this decay is the work of a fungus. 9. Nonsense. 
10. The sap and the tap-root are the particular bogies of hor¬ 
ticultural quacks. It is safe to make almost any statements 
concerning them, since the fruit-grower cannot disprove them, 
even though the statements may be little more than cunning 
nonsense. 11. Tell us the names of those three nurseries? 
But it is unfortunate that Persia is not the natural habitat of 
the peach, or Russia of the apple, or Germany of the plum ! 
But these are merely technical slips. The larger truth is that 
there is no proof, or even evidence, that seeds taken from the 
natural habitats of these fruits give any better stock than seeds 
secured with equal care elsewhere and within the range in 
which the species thrive. 12. Humbug. How do they tell 
which stock is to produce the red fruit and which the sour 
fruit ? 13. It is a common sophistry to compare the breeding 
of animals with the breeding of plants. Practically the only 
point in common is the accident that we use one word—breed- 
ing—for our operations in the two kingdoms, the animals and 
the plants. But similarities in words mean nothing, else we 
could compare the head of a stream with the head of a family. 
But wholly aside from this, grafting and budding are not 
breeding in any proper sense of the term. 14. Yes ; seeds 
may be expected not to have diseases which do not occur 
where the seeds are produced, but this fact does not prevent 
the seedlings from acquiring diseases which occur in the 
country in which the seedlings are to be grown. 15. Not 
necessarily so. 16. Nonsense. Peaches ought to bear at four 
to six years from seed, and apple trees now and then bear at 
eight years from seed. 
EVERY ISSUE SEEMS THE BEST. 
J. L. Geyer & Son, Norwich, Ohio, Nov. 19, 1898.—“ Enclosed 
find $1 for National Nurseryman another year. We can’t keep 
house without it. Every issue seems the best.” 
