THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
57 
GENESEE VALLEY . 
Season Opened Early and Wholesale Shipments Moved Rapidly 
—Lively Business at Dansvllle—Retail and Catalogue 
Trade Excelled Records—Many Sales for Next 
Fall—Rochester Nurserymen Handled an 
Especially Heavy Trade. 
Da^sville, N. Y., April 23 .—James M. Kennedy: “Spring 
opened up unusually early. About all the wholesale ship¬ 
ments have been made. The retailers and the catalogue trade 
are billing out and seedling planting has commenced. We 
never had a better spring for handling stock. Trees were 
never in better demand and at good prices. It is impossible 
to fill som: of the orders. Every salable tree will be disposed 
of no matter what variety, grade or age. That is what we calj 
a record breaker. The retail and catalogue trade excelled all 
previous years. There never was a brighter prospect for the 
nursery business than at present, which is welcomed by al- 
nurserymen. Quite a number of sales have been made for 
next fall and at good prices. Nursery stock has never win¬ 
tered better. Collections have been very good up to this 
writing. About the usual amount of stock will be planted this 
spring. We all anticipate a good season’s business.’’ 
Rochester, N. Y., April 14 .—Brown Brothers Co.: “We 
have your favor of the 12 th. We are so busy we have no time 
to make you any satisfactory report of the season’s trade, but 
take pleasure in testifying to the very satisfactory conditions 
that have obtained all through the season. Trade among all 
nurserymen, wholesale and retail, seems to be good, so that 
there will be a very cheerful meeting in Milwaukee next June. 
Trade throughout the country in all lines is good, and we 
think is likely to continue for some time at least, so we believe 
the coming year will be an unusually good one in the nursery 
business.” 
Rochester, N. Y., April 28 — Chase Brothers Company : 
“We have been busier than ever, and I think that is true of 
all the Rochester nurserymen this season. Have cleaned up 
very close. Prices, both wholesale and retail, promise to con¬ 
tinue good.” 
Rochester, N. Y., April 28 .—Allen L. Wood : “We have 
had the liveliest season in the history of our business, having 
done double the amount of packing. We are well cleaned up 
on stock, more so than ever before. The prospect for mainte¬ 
nance of prices is very good. The only thing that can hurt it 
now, it seems, would be an overplanting. We shall not 
increase our usual plant, and if all nurserymen would promise 
to withhold in the same way, stock would sell another season 
as it has this, for more nearly what it is worth.” 
Rochester, N. Y., April 28 .—Thomas W. Bowman & Son : 
“We have had an exceptionally good season; stock well cleaned 
up and both wholesale and retail trade better even than that 
of last year. The outlook is very promising.” 
A NURSERYMAN’S CONTRACT. 
A Penobscot county, Maine, orchardist ordered a quantify 
of nursery stock this spring paying 30 cents each for apple 
trees and 75 cents each for pear and plum trees. 1 hen he 
found a catalogue quoting prices at 25 and 5 0 cents respec¬ 
tively, and wrote to the nurseryman from whom he had 
purchased, asking him to meet the lower prices. The reply 
was : “ We hold your note signed and delivered by which you 
bound yourself to pay a certain sum upon the delivery of 
certain stock. We shall surely collect the note, and when you 
object to prices again, object before you purchase and not 
after.” 
The customer wrote to the Rural New Yorker and that 
paper says : “ If you signed a contract to buy certain goods 
at a certain figure you will have to make the contract good, 
unless you can show that fraud was practiced in some way. 
There is nothing to show any fraud in this transaction. The 
cheaper trees may or may not be as good as those you bought. 
The prices charged for the first lot are high, unless they are 
the finest stock. The chances are that the first lot of trees is 
of better quality than the other.” 
BUSY SCENES AT PAINESVILLE. 
A visit to the Storrs & Harrison Company is at all times 
interesting, but most so at this season of the year, when spring 
shipping is in progress, says a writer in the American Florist* 
The various departments are veritable hives of industry. 
Hundreds of men, women and boys are employed in one way 
or another. A look through their houses shows the plants for 
spring sales to be in superb condition. The endless variety 
that goes to make up a plant catalogue list would well nigh 
bewilder one. There are houses filled with geraniums, some 
with fuchsias, others with begonias and so on down the list, 
the majority of the plants being grown in two-inch pots. A 
house well worthy of a good look was one filled with 44,000 
Crimson Ramblers in two-inch pots, summer struck cuttings^ 
kept in a semi-dormant state through the winter and allowed to 
come along gradually with the spring. These are for planting 
out for own root stock, for those who prefer this kind to the 
grafted article. 
The stock of palms, ficuses and dracaenas is looking well^ 
but according to Robert George the demand for palms has 
slacked up somewhat. Several houses of hybrid roses in pots 
are being forced for cuttings. One crop of 100,000 has been 
taken off and rooted. Hybrids are much easier to root at this 
season of the year than in summer. A glance into one of the 
propagating houses proved this fact conclusively. A bench 
with over 50,000 were ready for potting without the sign of a 
yellow leaf. Mr. George says the loss is not over two percent. 
A look through the cold storage plant in interesting and 
makes one wonder where such an immense number of trees 
and shrubs go to. Hundreds of thousands are stored away for 
spring delivery ; 400,000 feet of lumber is consumed in the 
manufacture of packing cases for shipping purposes. All the 
boxes and packing cases are made by their own carpenters on 
the place. In another room a number of men and boys are 
employed in grafting fruit trees, and the rapidity with which 
this work is performed was a revelation. Otf in one corner of 
this room two harness makers are busy making new harnesses 
and repairing old ones, this work also being done by their own 
men. In the seed department everybody is busy weighing 
seed, filling bags and packing orders, perfect order prevailing 
throughout the entire establishment. 
The business so far this year is in advance of last year, 
which was conceded to be the banner year. 
