554 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. DoC. 



that can be brougliL out, and they undertake to bring it out, and 

 thev succeed, with whatever branch of horticulture they under- 



take. 



Tliere comes the question of "how far apart shall I plant my 

 trees?" I always say that is a local question; one man will tell 

 you so far, and another, another distance, and so on, but to me it 

 resolves itself into a local question. All my life I have been grow- 

 ing peaches, but lately for the last 10 or 12 years I have been plant- 

 ing apple trees to keep me when I get old and lazy. I am afraid the 

 trouble with most of us is that we get lazy before we get old. I 

 started to plant one peach orchard on light, thin land, twelve feet 

 cipart, but by some carelessness, we got an eleven foot pole, and 

 before we found it out the trees had been growing two months. It 

 has been discussed by horticulturists, and cussed by drivers who 

 had to drive the teams with plows and harrows through it. A corre- 

 spondent in Canada who had heard of this close planting, finally 

 decided he would make a visit to the States, don't you know, for 

 the purpose of seeing this orchard; he told me he had followed my 

 example, only had gone farther and planted his apples 32 ft. apart, 

 and then between them he had planted the peaches 16 ft. apart, 

 and between the peaches, plums 8 ft. by 8 ft., and then he said, 

 "What do you think about it?" I said, ''I think you are a damn 

 fool." ''W-what?" he said, horrified; ''why, I made a trip to the 

 States, don't you know, for the purpose of seeing you and Prof. 

 Bailey, don't you know" — Bailey, of Cornell; in view of what he 

 said to the Englishman, 1 think he is a pretty good fellow. From 

 my place the Englishman went up to see Prof. Bailey, and he told 

 him the same thing about close planting that he had told me, and 

 that I had said he was a damn fool; ''Now, what do you think of 

 that?" he asked Prof. Bailey. Bailey said, "Why, Hale is gen- 

 erally right." Now, of course, you can understand why I love 

 Bailey. It took that blessed Englishman a year to get that through 

 his head, and then he saw the point and laughed, and wrote me a 

 jolly good letter and I suppose he is laughing yet. These inter- 

 planting problems cannot bo worked out in any scientific manner, 

 by theory; it means just plain every day hard work, observation, 

 and adapting yourselves largely to local conditions, varieties, etc., 

 which reminds me of the story of the two scientific gentlemen who 

 went hunting one summer in the Rocky Mountains, camping out; 

 finally one night they came upon the shack of a hunter, who agreed 

 to take them in for the night, and give them something to eat. In 

 the corner of the one room there stood a large stove, standing about 

 8 ft. from the bottom on stakes. The hunter was out, and the two 

 scientific gentlemen began to discuss the reason for putting the 

 stove up in that manner; one of them finally came to the scientific 

 conclusion that it was put up so high, because heat always rose first 

 and the quicker he could get it up there at the ceiling, the quicker 

 it would naturally fall again, and distribute itself through the room 

 and so get most heat at least cost. The other had another scientific ex- 

 planation, equally plausible, and each thought he w^as right, they 

 made a wager on the subject. They decided to ask the hunter, so 

 when he came in, thev said to him "You have a nice warm room here, 

 but now tell us, why do you set your stove up that way?" "Oh," 



