STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 207 



your unpruncd trees in twelve years; but you may summer prune your Osage hedge 

 for twenty years, and never see a flower. 



1 have drawn a parallel between the existence of a government and the life of a tree, 

 the likeness is perfect, and it enables you to understand the principles of fruit culture 

 better than anything I can say. We say of governments that they are supposed to be 

 created for the benefit of the individuals who are governed; and of tree life we say 

 that leaves, and roots, and branches — the officers which compose the government of 

 the tree — arc for the benefit of the individual cells which conferred the power on them. 

 Great wars are \ iolent efibrts to right some wrong, when it seems necessary to sacrifice 

 many individuals for the good of the whole. So in pruning, there are many occasions 

 when a sacrifice of a portion of the aggregated cells is a benefit to those which are left; 

 l)Ut it is just as rational to say that systematic war would be a benefit to a nation, as 

 that systematic priming is a benefit to a tree. 



There can not be the least doubt but that continued pruning weakens vitality, and 

 lays the tree open to the attacks of numerous diseases and foreign enemies; and that 

 the continued propagation from everlastingly pruned trees is one of the great causes, 

 of the modern failures in fruit growing. 



Mr. Meehan — While I was reading this address it occurred to me 

 to remark further, that verj^ often customs and habits remain in exist- 

 ence long after the reasons which induced them have passed away. 

 It seems to be the case in man}' things connected with this question 

 of fruit culture. It seems strange that at this late day we should 

 have to show that the keeping of roots near the surface is right, and 

 that one of the leading practices in planting fruit trees is that we 

 should never plant them deep ; and yet, after planting them in that 

 way, we seem sometimes to take especial pains to destroy them. It 

 seems sometimes necessary to show that roots will not grow healthily 

 except near the surface. I have brought with me some suckers which 

 were taken off last spring. These three specimens had a few roots 

 at the bottom, and were planted down eighteen inches, and they 

 scarcely came out at all until the part of the plant near the surface 

 of the soil came in contact with the atmosphere, and roots sprung 

 from it there. 



Mr. Wier — I wish to make a few remarks on this lecture. It eeems 

 very strange to me that our State Horticulturist and brother Meehan 

 have found out how to make the leaves of trees grow better than 

 God Almighty. They say you cannot have leaves grow well unless 

 they have the light of the sun. Now, it seems to me that our great 



