54 ' STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



recom me lifted in other states, we regard as a great mistake here, an egregious 

 blunder. Michigan orchards, it is believed, require nothing of the sort, but 

 do need the free sweep of the winds, whicli would be thereby obstructed, to 

 the detriment of fruit crops, and trees also, in their iiardiness and ability to 

 withstand all vicissitudes of climate here. Low evergreen hedges, not to ex- 

 ceed say four feet in height would be allowable, and in many locations very 

 beneficial, running through tlie orchard at intervals, for catching and holding 

 the snows for a further winter protection, but kept low enough to obstruct the 

 wind as little as may be. 



Neither let the orchard location be crowded aside into some obscure or 

 ^' spare lot" of little value, but choose the most valuable field and command- 

 ins: eminence of the whole farm. 'round whicli there shall ever cluster the 

 fondest memories, carrying old age back to happy childhood, — holding green 

 and fresh the many endearing old associations inseparable from the spot where 

 our young feet used to scamper for the reddest, the yellowest, the mellowest, — 

 recollections that fade not while life lasts. 



Among the mistakes in orchard planting we would refer to tliat of setting 

 each kind of fruit in a location by itself. I would advocate the planting of 

 different sorts interchangeably in the same rows, using the same location ; for 

 example, for the peach and the pear orchard first a peach, then a pear tree. 

 It is not good for pears to be alone, but they need proper companionship. 

 Pair them off as they do in congress, — if the whole lot were paired then there 

 would be no battles to be fought, the business would be easily done. I saw a 

 big peach orchard, and right alongside it a pear orchard located of 1,000 

 trees planted all by themselves, and not a pear tree left now worth a row of 

 pins except the last tree of each row near the peaches; they were planted some 

 14 years ago. 



Wliy do our orchards so soon exhaust their soils, and become old and dilap- 

 idated before their time? Why do we find it so difficult to keep up a supply 

 of the requisite elements for full and continuous crops? Chietiy because the 

 kinds are massed by themselves, and are thereby rendered powerless to afford 

 aid or relief to each other. I must not take your time, or digress so far from 

 the limits of our topic as to attempt a solution of the chemical mysteries of 

 plant and tree growth ; how the peach and the pear, for instance, act upon, 

 set free, extract, and magically conjurize among the same soils and elements, 

 the one so as to produce in quantity, prussic acid and delicious peaches, and 

 the other the saccharine exquisiteness of the sugary, melting pear, and the 

 substance of its gritty core and skin, instead of the peach bloom and })it. Yet 

 these wonders they do accomplish, and that without stint or limit; but in 

 order to do so to tlie greatest extent and fullest effect they require to stand in 

 juxtaposition, and when so placed their relation becomes that of mutual help- 

 ers each to the other. This let us call our pearing system, as it pairs our 

 locations for orcharding. Now it only remains to pair wisely, and hit upon 

 the true and correct pairing of all our fruits each with its proper mate or 

 mates; and this requires a term of systematic trial and experiment. The lib- 

 erty I crave in suggesting this line of experiment is for the purpose of helping 

 us in finding out how far we may be benefited in thus locating oar orchards of 

 diffeient fruits together. We admit that this has never yet been fully or sat- 

 isfactorily demonstrated, but per contra, it is fully shown that ninety per cent, 

 of all the pear orchards tested for the last dozen or twenty years have proved 

 failures, practically from the tree blight. Yet it is only recently that it has 

 occurred to any mind, perhaps, that any hope of relief from the pear tree 



