WINTER MEETING. 187 



Many experiments show that trees do grow faster when protected 

 by these wooden wrappers. In the nursery young trees are close 

 together, and partially shade each other. When planted simply in 

 orchards, they lose this protection, their trunks being fully exposed to 

 the direct rays of the sua which hardens the bark and dries up the 

 sap, perhaps, faster than the newly transplanted roots can supply it. 

 The wrappers also protect them partly from borers. I remove the 

 wrappers from the trees, look for borers, wash the trees, and replace 

 the wrappers. A word about clover : I almost agree with Mr. Rob- 

 nett. After trees are five or six years old they may be ready for clover. 

 Pigs don't do the orchard any good, but the clover will do the pigs 

 good, and the pigs will do nis pocket book good when he sells them. 

 There is danger of fire when you have clover in the orchard. I knew 

 an orchard greatly damaged by fire. A man burned up my brother's 

 orchard. If the ground is rich and the clover heavy, remove the first 

 crop for hay, and leave the second crop to seed the ground. 



Mr. Robnett — Fire keeps me scared all the time. We have plowed 

 a strip twelve feet wide around the outside. We also plow other strips 

 across the orchard, both ways dividing it into sections, so that if afire 

 should get started, we could confine it to one section. My one hundred 

 acre orchard is divided into eight sections in this way. If one of them 

 should get burned, I would still have eighty-seven and one-half acres 

 of orchard left. 



Mrs. A. Z. Moore spoke of trees being injured by the wooden 

 wrappers. The trunks were smaller in the wrappers than above them. 

 Some members thought the wrappers must have been tied too tight. 



Judge Miller thought that the exclusion of the light from the bodies 

 of the trees might work har'B. 



Mr. Gilkeson — Does not the sun crack these on wrappers so that 

 the borers can get in through the cracks ? 



Mr. Murray — In my experience they don't blow off and don't crack. 



Mr. Gilkeson — After twenty years' experience, I think I could 

 now raise an orchard for one-half the expense of wire screens or 

 wooden wrappers. Trees are often injured by wire, and the wooden 

 wrappers crack and blow off and let in the borers. I have seen them 

 blow across fifteen acres. I use paper to keep out borers. I buy it 

 reaoly cut, ten inches wide and long enough to go around the tr'^e. I 

 apply about the first of May, two inches in the ground andeigh^ inches 

 above. This paper is thick and strong, with a water-proof gloss. It 

 will last two years. 



Mr. Reed, of Wisconsin — I have tried Phillips' protector, made of 

 laths and wire. It protects from rabbits, but is nearly as dangerous 



