THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 19 



instruments of torture. I am as careless as you are, and my men are a good 

 deal like the rest of you. If a tree is scarred, we keep watch of the trees 

 scarred, and go right along and cut with a good sharp knife the rough bark 

 and paint them over immediately. That is the rule. And ordinarily you 

 can scar a tree or a human heart everlasting, and if you treat it well after- 

 wards it will heal up and things go along pretty well. (Applause.) 



Mr. Greening: Of course, Mr. Hale, you make some exceptions to a poor 

 growing season, don't you? For instance, like this year? We have had a 

 very poor growing season in the north, and I think the condition has pre- 

 vailed likewise everywhere in the world, and the trees that were planted 

 last spring have no doubt made the poorest growth this year of any known 

 in the history of the nursery business. 



Mr. Hale: I suppose that is a sort of nurseryman's plea for his trees not 

 doing as well as they ought to. I sympathize with you. Brother Greening. 

 I have been there myself. But this is no joke. Why of course, conditions 

 of the season, you have got to judge by the conditions of the season; but 

 a poor growing tree that is poorer than the rest in a poor growing season is 

 one that ought to be taken out. And yet if a tree makes a very poor start 

 even on account of the season, it is man}' times better to invest another 

 dollar with the nurseryman. You see that will help your business along. 

 I suggest you let him pull them out. If you don't get a tree or a calf or a 

 boy started right, right down from the ground floor, it is hard to lick them 

 into shape. And so I am emphatic on start. 



Mr. Van Wagoner: A tree that is partially winter-killed, is it advisable 

 to replant? 



Mr. Hale: What do you mean by partially winter-killed? 



Mr. Van Wagoner: The limbs frozen back. The body is all right. 



Mr. Hale: If the body and roots are all right, make a new top. Don't 

 bother about that. 



Mr. Greening: This question of filling up the soil and renovating the soil 

 in old orchards is one of greater importance than I believe we can possibly 

 appreciate. During the time I attended the fair at Benton Harbor this fall 

 I had many of the fruit growers come to me rather discouraged along the 

 lines of planting new orchards where the old ones had died out. One gentle- 

 man told me that he had planted last spring a number of thousand peach 

 trees, and a portion of these were planted where an old orchard had stood, 

 and the balance of it lapped over on to soil that had not been used for orchard 

 purposes before. The trees on the ground where the old orchard was nearly 

 all died, and the trees on the new ground, with very few exceptions, all lived, 

 although he told me that more than 95 per cent of the trees had lived and 

 made a good growth while the others had died. I asked him what was the 

 trouble, and he explained to me that he thought it was the aphis. 



Now I believe that soil from which old orchards have been taken must 

 have time to recuperate. I believe that soil should have rest at least for 

 two or three years, that green crops should be ploughed under; and I know 

 no better experience along that line than one I had myself on my own grounds 

 at home. Now a tree will take a certain fertilizing element out of the soil 

 that no other plant will take up, and what it takes out has been a puzzle 

 to me. For instance, a crop of apple trees grown, followed up with a crop 

 of pear trees — I am speaking now of nursery work — with an interval of one 

 year, during which time we ploughed under a new crop of cow peas, then 

 again followed up with a crop of cherry trees, we found that the soil had 

 been badly impoverished. Instead of our letting the land lie two years 



