Much has been said and written upon the subject of rearing fruit trees, and when matter of this kind is addressed to the nurseryman, it is to be welcomed if based upon sound botanical principles, but we cannot recommend the farmer to grow his own fruit trees, as he rarely pays sufficient attention to their youthful training, and we therefore recommend the purchase of fruit trees from the best growers, to get the best sorts, and to get well-grown and healthy examples. These should be carefully lifted and planted as soon as possible after leaving the nursery, always avoiding trees that have hawked the market week after week, even if procurable for nothing. Some people insist upon the propriety of planting poor trees grown in poor soil, but our experience has shown that nothing could be a greater mistake. It is true that these often fruit soon; but getting crops of fruit from trees only a quarter grown, though sometimes welcome to a tenant with no sure holding, is a matter which should always be looked to by the landlord, who, indeed, should pay greater attention to his orchards than is usually the case, if his desire be to hand them down to his successors in anything like a good bearing condition. That fruit trees must in time get old is quite true; at the same time it may be stated as an important fact, that poor stunted trees on the one hand, or those too prodigal of their youth on the other, will too surely result in decrepitude ere half the span of a healthy tree be attained. Feeling so strongly as we do the importance of healthy young trees from a good soil and climate to plant even in an unfavourable district, instead of, as is generally sought after, trees from a poor soil, we are glad to have our opinion fortified by a successful practical grower of fruit trees, whose samples of young stock in apple trees, as we have seen them exhibited in Yeovil market, are patterns of healthiness in bark and models of form. The cultivator to whom we refer is Mr. J. Scott, whose name and place we have before mentioned. He says, in his Descriptive Catalogue of Fruit Trees:— There remains _one thing_ the writer would especially guard intending planters against; that is, be careful _never to purchase_ trees off a poor soil. I know this is heterodox; but many years’ experience has taught me the fallacy of the popular dogma, _i.e._, “Get your trees off poor soils, as they will be hardier, and endure the storms better.” I could show examples, in numbers, in my nursery, where the trees came from one of the so-called poor soils, that never will be anything like healthy trees. They were hide-bound and checked in their natures when I received them, and I believe will ever remain so, less or more. A genial, moderately rich, and naturally good soil is the soil I would choose my trees from.