PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 37 



would plant none of the poorer quality, like Ben Davis, Cooper's Market, 

 Limber Twig, Flushing Spitzenburg, etc., although they succeed well, and 

 when well grown are fine to look at; but you will have to sell them for 

 about one half what the better apples mentioned above will bring. 



Of course the orchards should be closely watched for all destructive 

 insects and fungi, which may be easily warded off by the application of the 

 combined Bordeaux mixture and Paris green. 



Mr. El. M. Kellogg said that in his judgment the real cause of the fail- 

 ure of the orchards had not been stated. It is, of course, the result of a 

 cause, and that cause began its operation thirty years ago in excessive 

 pruning. In those days they also picked the leaves off from grapevines, 

 not understanding the fact that we can not seriously disturb the balance 

 between top and roots without doing perhaps permanent harm to the 

 tree or vine. Excessive pruning has deranged the whole system of the 

 trees, preventing proper assimilation of the sap. When trees have been 

 weakened they are attacked by every fungus and insect known to their 

 life. Later on, the apple was weakened by bad methods of propagation. 

 Nursery stock should be budded from bearing trees, yet there is now 

 scarcely a tree-grower but propagates by buds from nursery rows. Such 

 buds do not transmit the vigor which comes from the buds of mature, 

 strong, bearing trees. The nurserymen are propagating for money only, 

 not caring whether the orchardists get any fruit. I have been offered 

 apple trees at $3.50 per 100. They can not be grown for that price, 

 at the present rates of labor, if grown as they should be. We might as 

 well try to renew an old animal as an old tree. Get trees on good, hardy 

 stocks. Mr. Post of Lowell got seedlings from Mann, Ben Davis, and 

 Janet, and grafted them low in the root, then topgrafted them and so got 

 a good foundation for his trees, and I feel sure he will succeed. Mr. 

 Kellogg related how he had seen four men, at different times in the same 

 forenoon, in Rochester, N. Y., buy of a man four different kinds of apple 

 tree from the same load, the owner each time declaring the entire load to 

 be of the variety wanted by the purchaser. So long as our stock is taken 

 from old beds, canes, and such apple trees as these, so long will we con- 

 tinue to enquire, "Why don't they grow?" I am going to set a new 

 apple orchard, and do all the good things recommended, and I expect to 

 grow rich from it! 



Prof. L. R. Taft: I am glad to endorse what Mr. Kellogg says, in 

 many respects, but in some things he is wrong. He has some wrong ideas 

 as to scions and stocks. It has been said that Mr. Post used hardy wild 

 crab stocks, but he denies having done anything so foolish. While scions 

 from the nursery row grow faster the first year or two, than those from 



