es of star-observers, and others. The amateurs in the
background, disinterested and unselfish, support appropriations by
legislatures for even abstruse public work. The amateur is the
embodiment of the best in the common life, the conservator of
aspirations, the fulfillment of democratic freedom. I hope pomology
will not lag in this respect. In all lines I hope that professionalism
will not subjugate the man who follows a subject for the love of it
rather than for the gain of it or for the pride of it. In
horticulture, when we lose the amateur, who, as the word means, is the
lover, we lose the ideals.

Naturally, the nurseryman cannot grow trees of all the good apples
that may be wanted. The experiment stations cannot maintain living
museums of them, for their function is to investigate rather than to
preserve. Arboretums are concerned with other activities. Is there not
some person of means, desiring to do good to his successors, ready now
to establish a fructicetum _in perpetuum_ for the purpose of
preserving a single tree of at least one hundred of the choicest
apples, to the end that a record may be kept and that amateurs may be
supplied with cions thereof?

XII

THE PLEASANT ART OF GRAFTING

If I procure cuttings of a good apple, what shall I do with them that
they may give me of their fruitage?

The cuttings will probably be dormant twigs of the last season's
growth. They may not be expected to grow when placed in the ground.
They are therefore planted in another tree, becoming cions. The case
is in no way different in principle from the propagating of the young
tree in the nursery, of which we already have learned. The nurseryman
works with a small stock, a mere slip of a seedling one or two years
old. The grower would better not attempt the making of nursery trees.
It is better for him to purchase regular nursery trees and to graft
the cions on them; or he may put the cions in any older tree that is
available.

I have spoken of my own collecting of certain dessert apples. I
"worked" them on young Northern Spy trees, purchased when two or three
years old; they were grafted after they had stood a year in the
orchard. These Northern Spy trees, used in this case as stocks, were
regularly grown by nurserymen. The Northern Spy was chosen because of
its hardiness and straight, clean, erect growth, making it a vigorous
and comely stock. Weak-growing varieties are usually rejected for this
purpose. Some