STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 55 



ters." I approach this question with far more diffidence in this 

 latitude than I would at home, and will not venture to assert that 

 all your orchards m the extreme north could have been saved by my 

 method, but I will say that cultivation in the early part of the sea- 

 son does not make them more tender. Late growth, unmatured^ sap 

 suddenly expanded by severe freezing, as occurred on the 18th of 

 December, 1884, I think, is what did nearly all the damage, and 

 might have been ameliorated by early cultivation, followed by buck- 

 wheat or rye in the fall. Though I know but little personally of 

 the previous condition of your lamented, lost and crippled orchards, 

 I will venture to doubt their thrifty growing and bearing condition 

 at the time, if the winters had been as notable for mildness as they 

 were for severity. I think it far more probable that they were in that 

 semi-dying and despairing condition, so conspicuous in all my obser- 

 vations, and if so, you will surely not contend that the starving process 

 I have tried to describe was a success in preserving your trees. On 

 the contrary, you will concede that a tree which has been barely able 

 to keep alive on its scanty rations for years, must be more susceptible to 

 abnormal hardships, just as a calf, or a man can better resist vermin, 

 disease or cold when well fed, and that pos^sibly you hastened their 

 early departure by omitting what you might have done for them. 

 I heard of an orchard last winter, less than sixty miles north of me, 

 which the owner had despairingly grubbed out at sixteen years old, 

 because the trees were nearly all dead or dying. That man honestly 

 believed that nothing but the Arctic winters killed his orchard, while 

 I just as confidently believe that he ignorantly starved it to death, 

 and at worst he is but little worse off than many others whose or- 

 chards insist on a prolonged agony. 



Young trees, especially in the nursery, are far more subject to 

 winter-hurt than old orchard trees. I well remember reading and 

 hearing it spoken of at Kansas City, when the Mississippi Valley 

 Horticultural Society met there, that young orchards and nurseries 

 had been extensively damaged by bark-bursting in Arkansas, and I 

 think Texas, a few years before. T have not since heard that they 

 abandoned orchard planting or waited for iron-clads to be imported 

 and tested or grown from seed. I do not mean this allusion as any 

 slur on these efforts, but I cannot afford to wait for such far-off 

 demonstrations. And, besides, though I confidently hope for final 

 success in finding trees that will go to rest at proper seasons and not 

 be awakened by delusive sunshine and showers in the fall; yet I have 

 no hope whatever that any variety of apple will ever be found that 

 can thrive in grass sod indefinitely. We will always have to see to 

 it that our trees make a normal, healthy growth, not excessive, 

 especially in the fall, but not less than six to twelve inches on main 

 terminals. 



This is the main base of my hope for success in orcharding. I 

 am sorry and chagrined to think that I have never seen an old 



