234 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
There is just as much reason to think, that while there 
may he adjustments in prices based on cost of production, 
as well as supply and demand, that the future holds a 
steady reasonable profitable business for the nursery 
trade of the entire country. 
Editor, National Nurseryman, 
Flourtown, Pa. 
My dear Mr. Hemming: 
I have just opened your July number of the National 
Nurseryman, and noted the article pertaining to my 
“careless handling” of the reputation of the Harrison 
Nursery Company of Berlin, Md. In a case like this I 
feel that “every knock is a boost,” because we have had 
so much difficulty with this company—not alone in 
Pennsylvania, but, as you will recall, in Indiana and 
West Virginia—for sending out diseased stock, and 
stock untrue to name, over a period of several years. 
Had (lie Pennsylvania instance been an isolated case, it 
would have been very different, but we state officials 
have just about reached our limit of endurance and 
patience with this firm, which refuses to explain such 
misdeeds in tin 1 conduct of their business. 
1 contend that the Association was not placed in any 
embarassing position at the time of the hearing, because 
I furnished sworn affidavits of the seriously diseased 
condition of the trees shipped to one of our large grow¬ 
ers in our principal fruit district. This affidavit bore 
evidence to the fact that four official experts of this De¬ 
partment. and two experts from the Pennsylvania State 
College accompanied by the County Agent of the County, 
were present at the time of inspection of these trees. One 
lot, approximately 2,500, plainly showed 90 per cent of 
Crown Gall and Hairy Root infection. Furthermore, if 
the State of Pennsylvania was willing to permit its 
officials to travel beyond state lines more readily on the 
condition of such questions arising, as came before your 
Grievance Committee, I would have been pleased to have 
appeared personally. 
I wish to thank you for the way in which you have 
treated the whole matter in your paper, because it re¬ 
flects your attitude toward honest grading of diseased 
stock lo the state officials and inspectors of the whole 
country. I really feel that the injury accrues to your 
paper rather than to the standards which I am trying to 
uphold. 
You may be advised that I took this matter up with 
Mr. Harrison in person in the presence of the Maryland 
official, at the time of the hearing on Quarantine 37 at 
Washington, and Mr, Harrison had practically no ex¬ 
cuse or reasons to offer for this miserable shipment be¬ 
yond state lines. 
There is only one course left for the state officials 
when warnings and pleas are powerless, and that is, to 
refuse issuance of the license, which would be much 
more serious than the charges which we have made. 
Yours very truly, 
J. G. SANDERS, 
Director, Bureau of Plant Industry. 
THAT WHICH PERSISTS 
One of the common little adventures of a countryside 
ramble is to come upon some abandoned cellar hole. The 
house which once stood there was perhaps destroyed by 
fire years ago and has been forgotten. Nothing remains 
now to tell the tale but the empty, gaping excavation in 
which young birches and tall Joe-Pye weeds have taken 
root, and the crumbling underpinning. The remains of 
an old chimney, perhaps, suggest something of the life 
that was. 
Inevitably there will be found beside the sunken door- 
stone some old flowering shrub—a lilac, most likely. 
Tiger lilies still bloom beside what was once a path to 
the road. Johnny-jump-ups, those hardy little reverted 
pansies, show where there was once a flower bed, with 
perhaps a sweet-william or two whose roots have sur¬ 
vived the vicissitudes of time. 
The life of the house has departed. All the dreams and 
plans, the labor and the worry have been wiped out. 
Only that remains which was once tended for no utili¬ 
tarian purpose but only for its beauty, lovingly tended 
by hands now dust. 
There is something symbolic about these old flowers. 
They hide the wounds of frustrated hopes. Love, it 
appears, lasts longest.— Collier's Weekly. 
EXPRESS RATE INQUIRY 
An investigation will be made by the Interstate Com¬ 
merce Commission into the interstate rates and charges 
whether such rates, applying between points in the 
United States and between such points and other points 
in adjacent foreign countries, are unreasonable or other¬ 
wise in contravention of the Interstate Commerce Act. 
Express companies and common carriers by rail, sub¬ 
ject to this act, are made respondents to the proceeding. 
The respective states, through the governors thereof and 
the state regulatory bodies, have been notified of the in¬ 
vestigation, the date of which will be announced later by 
the Commission. 
Frank P. Daniels, proprietor of the Daniels Nursery, 
Long Lake, Minnesota, writes “There has been a revolu¬ 
tionizing development taking place in the past few years 
at the Minnesota State Fruit Breeding Farm. Raspberry 
and strawberry growing have been greatly changed in 
the northwest by the new varieties sent out from there, 
and the Japanese Americana plum crosses are going to 
entirely change the plum map of the northwest and will 
undoubtedly make changes in the lists of varieties grown 
in the east.” 
T. II. Cobb, of the Chase Bros., Co., Rochester, N. Y., 
was visiting nurseries recently in the vicinity of Phila¬ 
delphia. It was his first visit to this section. He thor¬ 
oughly enjoyed it. Mr. Cobb is one of those young nur¬ 
serymen who is evidently interesting himself in the 
broader aspects of the trade and which form leaders in 
the future. 
