194 Stale Horticultural Society. 



first visit, I have been impressed with the fact that many orchards 

 need cultivating and feeding and pruning and spraying, if the ad- 

 vantages which Nature has liberally provided are made to give 

 the best account of themselves that is possible Nature will do a 

 great deal, but she sometimes needs some help. I have been 

 impressed with many other things, both good and bad — one I want 

 to mention — and that is the grand, whole-souled men with whom 

 this work in the orchards has brought me into contact. Is there 

 something in fruit growing that develops hospitality and whole- 

 souled manhood, or does it appeal only to men of such type? 



But I have been making comments that are exceedingly frank. 

 I only ask you to take them in the spirit in which they are given 

 and for the degree of truth which they may contain. Each point 

 referred to admits of almost endless discussion, and as many dif- 

 ferent views as there are men who are interested. Yet within 

 that range of views, somewhere, we may feel reasonably sure, the 

 truth is to be found, and every fruit grower should strive to the ut- 

 most to find it ; to see the principle involved, and its application to 

 his conditions. This is "sifting out the chaff and winnowing the 

 wheat." 



Only certain general comments are possible at this time in am- 

 plifying the foregoing observations. In the first place, we must 

 think of a tree as a living thing, that requires a certain amount 

 of food and water and air and sunshine to properly develop it. 

 While Nature's supply of all these things is ample, it is in a large 

 degree so locked up or so placed that it is not available for the use 

 of the trees. This is one of the places where man must step in and 

 give Nature some help. 



Fruit trees, as well as all plant life, get the mineral food — 

 that is, what comes from the soil — in a solution of water, the lat- 

 ter dissolving it out of the soil. It is a perfectly safe proposition 

 to make that most fruit trees lack a sufficient amount of plant 

 food, and, in the average season, a proper amount of water, to 

 bring them to their highest degree of perfection and to develop 

 properly a good crop of fruit, without, in some degree, weakening 

 the trees. Thorough cultivation makes plant food available; it 

 produces conditions in the soil which, other things being equal, in- 

 duce the chemical changes which are necessary to unlock, so to 

 speak, the food material that is already there, but in such a chemi- 

 cal form that plants cannot make use of it. As most fruit trees 

 can make profitable use of more food than they are getting, this 

 alone constitutes an argument for cultivation, the philosophy of 



