STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 121 



2. As raking the surface soil is equivalent to lowering the subsoil, surface drainage is, 

 by ridging, made tar more efficient than it can be with merely level culture. The water 

 having more Boil to descend through, bears a lesser proportion to the bulk of mold, and 

 must therefore drain out of the surface soil iu less time, than when saturation, as a result 

 of much water in proportion to soil, takes place in the surface moid. 



3. The more effective drainage, resulting from ridging and increased depth of porons 

 soil, must lead to an increase of temperature in the surface mold so drained, thus estab- 

 lishing conditions productive of earlier spring growth, as well as materially shortening 



ii intervals of suspended growth as result from excessive rains, or protracted drouth. 

 By tending to equalize temperature in the soil, ridging before planting to orchard trees, 

 would thus prolong the season, by improving the growing condition. Tin' increased 

 depth of soil would favor increased vigor and rapidity of growth, while the increase of 

 warmth must induce earlier growth in the spring, with the probable result of the com- 

 pletion of the season's growth earlier in the autumn, in consequence of the soil about 

 the roots of the trees being drier and so far less promotive of succulent or immature 

 growth of wood. 



4. Trees growing on ground so ridged and ameliorated, would be less liable to destruc- 

 tion or mechanical injury from severe freezing on the one hand, or excessive heat on the 

 other. Thus would ridging promote positive improvement, and preclude in many in- 

 stances serious injury. As to any supposed inconvenience in working land thrown into 

 ridges of twenty feet or upwards, after ample experience and extended observation in 

 this direction, I must say that working soils ridged only in so limited a degree, is but lit- 

 tle less convenient than would be its cultivation in level farms. And the actual incon- 

 venience incident to ridging, is far less considerable if done before trees are set, than is the 

 practice, observable in a number of instances, of ridging the soil up to the trees after they 

 arc of bearing m/.c. This latter practice forces the root end to curve upwards in an un- 

 natural form, without securing drainage about them, or the benefit of drainage in either 

 tree or fruit ; while ridging the soil before putting out the trees, would secure earlier and 

 h althier growth, as a condition precedent to finer and more mature and healthy fruit. 



As an ad interim expedient, to serve during the duration of at least one generation of 

 fruit trees, and as a precursory introduction to, and tolerable substitute (or tile drainage, 

 I submit to the society, that ridging for each row of trees and setting them in the ridge, 

 on soils that retain too much surface water or retain it too long, is worthy the attention 

 Of intending tree planters and orchardists in central Illinois. 



Tyler McWhorter of Millerburg, Mercer County, having been 

 prevented from doing so at the proper time, now read an essay 



ON THE APPLE. 



Can I hope to say anything new on B subject on which we have been talking and writ- 

 ing for some twenty years ? It is easy to write and elicit attention on a subject that 



comes to us with the charm of freshness, opening up some novel thought or new enter- 

 prise. But on the apple, a subject which we have bo often talked out, and then talked 

 it over again, can [expect to say anything new to the in. Eorticultural Society? 



It would be difficult to conceive when the human race first commenced t be cultivation 

 of the apple. It seems to have come on down from the earliest periods of the tradition- 



