The culture of fruits, and gardens also, contributes in no small degree to the improvement of a people by the excellent moral influence it exercises upon them. Everything that makes home attractive must contribute to this desirable end. Beyond the sacred confines of the happy hearthstone, with its dear familiar circle, there can be no more pleasant associations than those of the garden, where, in our tender years, we have aided loved parents, from them taking the first lessons in plant-culture, gathering the luscious fruits of their planting or of our own; nor of the rustic arbor, in whose refreshing shade we have reclined to rest and meditate amid its sheltering canopy of verdure, and where we have gathered the purple berries of the noble vine at a later period of the rolling year; nor of the orchard, with its bounteous supplies of golden and ruddy apples, blushing peaches, and melting pears. With such attractions about our homes, with such ties to be sundered, it is wonderful, and scarcely credible, that youth should ever be induced to wander from them, and to stray into paths of evil. Such happy influences must have a good moral effect upon the young. If it be argued that such luxuries will tend to degrade our morals by making us effeminate and sybaritic, or that such enjoyments may become causes of envy and consequent crime on the part of those who are less highly favored, it may be safely asserted that there is no better cure for fruit-stealing, than to give presents of fruit, and especially of fruit-trees, to your neighbors, particularly to the boys--encourage each to plant and to cherish his own tree, and he will soon learn the meaning of _meum_ and _tuum_, and will appreciate the beauties of the moral code, which he will be all the more likely to respect in every other particular. Some of the legislation of our country is a very curious relic of barbarism. According to common law, that which is attached to the soil, may be removed without a breach of propriety, by one who is not an owner of the fee simple; thus, such removal of a vegetable product does not constitute theft or larceny, but simply amounts to a trespass: whereas the taking of fruit from the ground beneath the tree, even though it be defective or decaying, is considered a theft. An unwelcome intruder, or an unbidden guest, may enter our orchard, garden, or vineyard, and help himself at his pleasure to any of our fruits, which we have been most carefully watching and nursing tor months upon trees, for the fruitage of which we may have been laboring and waiting for years, and, forsooth, our only recourse is to sue him at the law, and our only satisfaction, after all the attendant annoyance and expense, is a paltry fine for _trespass_ upon our freehold, which, of course, is not commensurate with our estimate of the value of the articles taken: fruits often possess, in the eyes of the devoted orchardist, a real value much beyond their market price.