Winter Meeting. 409 



minish the tendency toward fruitfulness, or cause a late growth, or 

 prevent a proper ripening of the wood for winter, or produce a soft and 

 immature tissue that is especially subject to the attacks of fungous dis- 

 eases. In truth, they and lime have just the opposite tendency. 



Special care, then, need only be exercised in the application of 

 nitrogen. The wood and leaf growth, as has already been pointed out, 

 will show whether sufficient nitrogen is being supplied or not, and any 

 excessive growth of leaf or twig will be conclusive evidence that too 

 large a quantity has been used. 



Such a mistake in a young orchard may be readily remedied by 

 planting to corn and removing both the corn and fodder, and in the 

 case of large trees that seem to have been overfed with nitrogen, seed 

 to timothy, removing as hay the crops, and by one or the other of these 

 means the danger is quickly removed. 



The utmost care, however, should be taken not to carry this de- 

 pleting process too far. It is like bleeding a patient for some malady — 

 a most excellent thing to do when the patient really requires to be bled, 

 but not a good thing if the bleeding process is carried too far. 



This cropping under all circumstances is a great temptation, as it is 

 reducing the expenses of handling and giving an additional return from 

 the land, but if carried to the extent of depleting the soil and no efifort 

 be made to restore the fertility thus removed, the small return obtained 

 from the farm crop will be much more than lost in the reduced vigor of 

 the orchard and the diminishing crops of fruit. 



As has already been pointed out, it is especially bad policy to have 

 the land alternately rich and poor. Better trees and better fruit will be 

 obtained by a consistent policy of one side of the proposition or the 

 other, and rather a somewhat underfed tree, existing under uniform 

 conditions, than one that is this year underfed and next year overfed, 

 or that is alternately rich and poor. 



PHOSPHORIC ACID. 



The commercial forms of phosphoric acid vary in availability more 

 than do those of any other element. We have every grade, from the 

 immediately available forms of dissolved bone black and dissolved rock, 

 through the medium acting forms of raw and steamed bone, to the 

 very slow acting, finely ground, untreated, phosphate rock. 



It depends very much upon how one is situated as to which of these 

 forms it will be most profitable to employ. Unless one has an orchard 

 of bearing age that is very badly run down and needs immediate stimu- 



