STATE HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 53 



almost any place, and wherever we find this want of growth, it is 

 safe to predict that we will find very occasional crops, and mostly 

 small fruit, in the exceptionally favorable seasons, and also a number 

 of dead and dying trees. 



What right have we to expect anything else? Do we find large, 

 plump raspberries and blackberries on small, stunted canes, struggling 

 in sod for a puny existence? No ! The berries will be in propor- 

 tion to previous year's growth of canes, as well as the season for 

 growing and ripening of berries. Do we expect to gather large 

 corn whether we push a large growth of young stalk or not, if the 

 season happens to be right? Not as a general thing. We have oc- 

 casional seasons when most any management gives a fair crop, but 

 they are as far between as our good apple crops. Do you think there 

 is a wide difference between an annual like corn, that has to grow its 

 whole supply of roots to suck up plant food for leaves and grain 

 every year, and an old tree that has already such a system of roots 

 organized to draw its supply from deep down and near the surface? 

 My observation and reasoning indicate that they are actually par- 

 allel; that the tree extends a system of new roots every year, as 

 well as corn does, and that when root growth is stunted or ob- 

 structed, it ceases to grow at the top, and can no more bear fruit 

 than the stunted corn stalk can bear a full sized ear of corn. We 

 have all made a mistake in overlooking this parallel. It has become a 

 stereotyped direction, in our reports and instructions, to sow the 

 orchard to grass when it begins to bear, or when we wish to hasten 

 that period, and this hastening is to-day regarded as a triumph and 

 vindication of a slovenly and delusive practice. The Jews gained a 

 very similar victory for Orthodoxy on Mount Calvary, and have not 

 yet admitted their mistake, although they never could avert, or es- 

 cape from, the consequences. 



In view of such inrooted and mistaken obstinacy, permit me to 

 repeat and lay it down as an axiom, that when an apple tree cannot 

 make a free extension of root growth, it also fails to make a clean, 

 healthy growth in the top, and the fruit will be exactly in proportion 

 in development and bulk, though the number of apples and seeds 

 may be multiplied. When the tree suffers any injury, such as tak- 

 ing ofE a ring of bark, driving a number of nails in the body, boring 

 holes, girdling by borers, twisting wire around the body or limbs, it 

 immediately directs its forces to repairing the injury, and also to 

 reproduce itself by seeds, as if conscious that the end of its destiny 

 is in danger of early defeat. Grass sod, long continued, tramping 

 by animals, or anything that obstructs the free passage of water and 

 its solutions of plant food from the surface soil to the roots, has 

 the same effect in shortening its growth, and producing fruit prema- 

 turely, as the direct mechanical injuries referred to. 



Neither can the apple tree find all the nourishment it needs down 

 below the range of grass roots, as maple, ash, locust, etc., seem to 



