72 . STATS POMOLOGICAI, SOCIETY 



age, but they never had borne very heavily until a number of 

 years ago. It was about Thanksgiving time, the leaves had 

 stayed oh the trees unusually late that year, and there came a 

 very wet, heavy, clinging snow which stuck on these leaves and 

 bent the trees, squashed them almost down to the ground. Well, 

 we got out the next morning and beat off the snow as well as 

 we could, but in spite of all our efforts those trees were very 

 seriously damaged. There were a great many big branches 

 torn out, and the trees were torn pretty badly. The next year 

 those trees that had been badly torn were loaded with apples, 

 and almost every apple on those trees, a very large percentage of 

 the apples on those trees that had been most heavily damaged 

 were No. i apples ; we found very few No. 2 or cider apples on 

 the trees that had been most heavily damaged. The other trees 

 right alongside of them where we had been more successful in 

 knocking the snow off had a smaller number of apples on them, 

 and the apples they did raise were not very good ones. So that 

 we have always found it to our advantage to prune pretty 

 heavily. I think it promotes the growth of the tree. The tree 

 seems to have what one might almost call an instinct, when it is 

 damaged, to try to propagate itself by fruiting heavily to make 

 up for its expected dissolution. It is almost as if the tree said 

 "Here has something happened to me that is going to kill me 

 pretty soon and it is my business to preserve my species, and I 

 will raise all the apples I can next year, and the best apples I 

 can, in order to keep up the growth of apples." I have been told 

 — I have never tried the experiment — that if you damage a tree, 

 drive some nails into a tree, hurt the tree, that the tree will in 

 the same way give extra fruit the next year. 



Then we cultivate pretty heavily. I think the plow is a pretty 

 valuable part of an orchard, the plow and the harrow. We 

 thought it was a great scheme to have sheep and we tried sheep 

 one year in the orchard to eat up the wormy apples. It so hap- 

 pened that year that we had an unusually good crop in that sheep 

 orchard, but I don't think it was altogether due to the sheep, 

 and I don't think the sheep have seriously diminished the num- 

 ber of worms in that orchard. I think that enough worms or 

 moths have come in from the other orchards to prevent that 

 from being of any very great value. We are going to plow up 

 that orchard now. We think the sod has got too hard, too solid, 



