nursery rows, placing the plants a foot apart in the row and the rows four feet apart. They will usually bloom the third year from seed, at which time every plant should be examined, and a label attached to each with the word staminate or pistillate, as the case may be, written upon each; common wooden labels, such as used by nurserymen, freshly painted at the time, will remain legible for two or three years. If it is more convenient to have the plants separated than to keep each one labeled, then they may be taken up after the sexes are determined, and each kind placed in a row by itself.

The Shepherdias produce very few suckers, but when any appear, they may be taken off and planted separately Layers root very readily, and plants may be produced in this manner quite rapidly.

It is quite probable that ripe wood cuttings will grow the same as the Currant, but I have never had occasion to try this mode of propagation, because they grow so readily from seed that I have practiced this method in preference to others. Besides, there is always a chance, when grow. ing any kind of fruit from seed, of producing something better than the original, consequently, the very uncertainty becomes fascinating to the true lover of horticulture, and the hope of the thing lightens the otherwise irksomeness of the task.

There is another species of Shepherdia found in the Northern States, the fruit of which is very insipid. I copy the description from Gray's Manual of Botany:

Shepherdia Canadensis. Canadian Shepherdia. "Leaves elliptical or ovate, nearly naked and green above, silvery-downy, and scurfy with rusty scales under neath; fruit yellowish-red; rocky or gravelly banks; Vermont to Wisconsin, and northward. A straggling shrub, three to six feet high; the branchlets, young leaves, yel. lowish flowers etc., covered with the rusty scales. Fruit insipid."

CHAPTER XII.

PREPARATION FOR GATHERING FRUIT.

To grow a crop of fruit is but the initial step towards the successful termination of the enterprise.

If the fruit is to be sent to market, then crates, baskets, etc., are necessary for gathering and transporting, all of which should be provided in advance of the ripening of the crop. The number of baskets required per acre cannot be given, inasmuch as the product will not be the same in any two seasons, but it is always best to provide enough, for if the supply should fall short in the busy part of the season, it might cause considerable loss.

We will suppose that a grower expects to send a thousand baskets per day to market, during the season, of any particular kind of small fruit, and if he sends them by railroad or steamboat, to a distance of twenty miles or more, he must not expect to have any baskets or crates returned in less time than six to ten days after the time of the first shipment, unless he has better success than usual with fruit growers in this vicinity; consequently he will have to provide six to ten thousand baskets to enable him continue gathering.

Sometimes, owing to the negligence of the commission merchant, no baskets will be returned for two or three

weeks, and a very large extra supply of baskets will be necessary to prevent a corresponding loss.

Ten thousand baskets, with a corresponding number of crates, should be provided, if a thousand baskets are to be picked per day.

To the inexperienced in these matters, this may seem to be an unnecessary outlay, but fruit growers in the Eastern States, at least, have learned that a little, or consider able, extra capital invested in baskets will quite often insure them against great losses.

Any one who has ever looked through the New York markets, soon after the close of the Strawberry season, must have noticed thousands of baskets and crates lying around loose, or being piled up in the streets, where the boys make bonfires of them at night, and thus the prop erty of the fruit grower is often destroyed through the willful neglect of those to whom the fruit was consigned.

Many remedies have been tried to prevent this waste, but none have been entirely successful, unless it be that of sending very cheap baskets and crates, which it is not expected will be returned. Many fruit growers are adopting this give away system, and under some circumstances it is probably the best, but under others it is doubtful if it is the most profitable in the end.

An attractive exterior is a good passport, even in the fruit line, and I know of many instances where fruit put up in handsome baskets, and enclosed in extra finished crates, has sold for almost double the price of that sent to market in an inferior style of crate and basket.

Many instances might be given in which neat, clean packages and carefully selected fruit, have well paid the grower for all his extra trouble and expense in sending it to market. If a man desires to secure a good reputation for the products of his garden and farm, he will see to it that they leave his premises in the best possible order, and be sure to put his name on each crate or other pack

age. Competition has become so great within the past ten years, that the cultivators of berries are compelled to exercise more care than formerly in selecting both fruit and packages, as buyers are now more critical and particular as they gain experience. The old trays, each holding several quarts of berries, and from which the fruit. was measured out to customers, are no longer seen in our markets, except for some hard kinds like the Huckleberry, and even for these this dishing-out system is very objectionable, to say the least. Of late years large quantities of the small fruits come to our northern markets from the South. This is especially the case with Strawberries, for increased facilities in the way of rapid transit by steamboats and railroads, with refrigerators on both, have now made the shipping of perishable fruits possible when it would not have been thought of a score of years ago. The trade in such articles will no doubt increase in years to come, and growers will need new styles of baskets and crates, or those better adapted to the purpose than any now in common use. But whatever kind of package is used, the grower will ever need to exercise great care in gathering and assorting his fruit. If his pickers are not instructed in regard to picking the berries in the best condition to stand the journey, the good may be injured by the poor, for half a dozen over-ripe berries in a basket are very likely to damage the entire lot. Green berries should also be avoided, but a few of these can be better tolerated than those that have become soft and commenced to decay. The topping out of the baskets with a few of the choicest and largest berries is an almost universal practice, and while in the abstract it might be called dishonest, still it is such a universal custom that no one is deceived. It's merely putting the best side out to attract the buyer.

Crates and baskets are in some cases returned free by the railroad and steamboat companies, unless the distance