Success with Small Fruits

futile efforts became the unconscious prophets of our own time-the Alchemists. For centuries they believed they could transmute base metals into gold and silver. Modern knowledge enables us to work c

never lost its power over heart or brain. As long, therefore, as humanity's mouth waters at the thought of morsels more delicious even than "sin under the tongue," I am sure of an audience when I discourse of strawberries and their kindred fruits. If apples led to the loss of Paradise, the reader will find described hereafte

, and their color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One

insignificant seed from which it grew, we are ready to believe in all possibilities of good. Thus we may gather more than berries from our fruit-gardens. Nature hangs thoughts and suggestions on every spray, and blackberry bushes give many an impressive scratch to teach us that good and ev

cal minds, but I must talk about them very much as nature has taught me, since, in respect to out-of-door life, my education was acquired almost wholly in the old-fashioned way at the venerable "dame's school." Nay more, I claim that I have warrant to gather from my horticultural texts more than can be sent to the dining table or commission merchant. Such a matter-of-fact plant as the currant makes some attempt to embroider its humble

tyle somewhat in harmony with our wanderings. Very many, no doubt, will glance at these introductory words, and decline to go with me, correctly feeling that they can find better company. Other busy, practical souls will pre

th. All the secrets I know shall become open ones. I shall conduct the reader to all the "good places," and name the good things I have discovered in half a lifetime of research. I would, therefore, modestly hint to the practical reader-to whom "time is money," who has an eye to the fruit only, and with whom the question of outlay and return is ever uppermost-that he may, after all, fi

into the fields, and in a notable instance across the entire place. One portion was so stony that it could not be plowed; another so wet and sour that even grass would not grow upon it; a third portion was not only swampy, but liable to be overwhelmed with stones and gravel twice a year by the sudden rising of a mountain stream. There was no fruit on the place except apples and a very few pears and grapes. Nearly all of the land, as I found it, was too impoverished to produce a decent crop of strawberries. The location of the place, moreover, made it very expensive-it cost $19,000; and yet during the third year of occupancy the income from this place approached very nearly to the outlay, and in 1878, during which my most expensive improveme

ences that unless these variations are carefully studied and indicated, books will mislead more people than they help. A man may write a treatise admirably adapted to his own farm; but if one living a thousand, a hundred, or even one mile away, followed the same method, he

me of our best raspberries cannot even exist in a hot climate or upon very light soils. In the preparation of this book it has been my aim to study these conditions, that I might give advice useful in Florida and Canada, New York and California, as well as at Cornwall. I have maintained an extensive correspondence with practical fruit growers in all sections, and have read with care contributions to the horticultural press from widely separated localities. Not conte

aults, but I intend that it shall be an expression of honest