Most of the questions in these various schemes are questions of soil and horticulture. One letter in opposition to the Agricultural Department's attitude, that was brought to my attention, stated that crops varied under different conditions, and that no one was able to tell what a certain soil would or would not produce throughout a period of years, and intimated that the Department of Agriculture might mislead the public; and yet the concern that sent it printed columns of figures guaranteeing returns from pecans and Satsuma oranges in a section where orange growing is of very doubtful possibility. Boiling down these objections by the promoters, they come to simply this: That the Agricultural Department, with no motive but to tell the truth, and with its corps of trained experts, might mislead the public, but they (the promoters) could not possibly be mistaken in their fabulous figures compiled for the purpose of getting money from some misinformed victim. Proxy farming never was a success and I do not think it ever will be. One of my friends told me a short time ago of a very successful young pecan orchard on the gulf coast. Upon inquiry I found that it was of reasonable size, nine years old, and that the owner had lived in it nine years. It was not 500 acres in extent, or 1,000 acres, or 2,000 acres, but about 20 acres. Last summer I went into a beautiful apple orchard in Southern Indiana and saw about forty acres of trees bending to the ground with delicious Grimes Golden apples. On that particular day there were great crowds of people walking among the trees and admiring the fruit. I too walked among the trees a short time, but of greater interest to me than the trees was the old, gray-haired man who had made the orchard. The trees could not talk, but he could, and he told the story of the years of care, and diligence, and work, and thought, and patience, that showed why it is not possible to cover the mountains of a state with orchards bringing almost immediate and fabulous incomes. Some time ago I stood talking to the old superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Washington--William R. Smith, now deceased--and while discussing with him the requisites for tree culture, he said "Young man, you have left out the most important one of them all," When I asked him what I had left out, he said "above all things it takes the eye of the master." So it does, and the master is he whose vigilance is continual, who watches each tree as if it were a growing child--as indeed it is, a child of the forests--who has the care and the patience, and who is not dazzled by the glitter of the dollar, but who loves trees because they are trees.