282 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



about the orchard and suffered to rot as in the " hammock" land 

 orange groves of Florida, where the under brush and extra timber 

 is rarely burned, but piled in heaps to rot away. 



If it is desirable to bring barren trees into bearing, or to 

 rescue from decay and death those in an unhealthy state, meas- 

 ures of a more radical and expensive character must be taken, 

 measures similar to those which have been practiced for centuries 

 with the grape vine, with complete success. These measures consist 

 either in removing the earth under the trees and putting new and 

 fresh earth in its place, as practiced with orange trees in Louisian;i. 

 and on the coffee plantations in the tropics, or in digging a deep 

 and wide ditch around the tree, inside the outer diameter of. the 

 branches, and i-efilling it with near half the earth removed and half 

 such mineral fertilizers and amendments as tree leaves and refuse 

 decaying vegetable matter of any sort for the other half. 



But nothing more than a general outline of the course to be' 

 pursued, can be indicated here ; and nothing more is necessary for 

 the intelligent amateur, fruit-grower, or orchardist, who feels the 

 strength of the proof, and accepts the situation. 



In these latter days most of the diseases which afflict humanity 

 are believed to be attributable to improper nutrition and faulty 

 hygiene, and are relieved or cured by a more or less radical change 

 in food and habit. 



In the animal world, the truth appears in a still stronger 

 light ; while in the vegetable kingdom, nutrition counts for almost 

 everything. Still, in the case of the peach yellows and pear blight, 

 both appear, on first sight, to be distinct diseases, neither yielding 

 to any remedy yet applied to them, and both being attended with 

 the present fashionable bacteria, which are made responsible for 

 many diseases and all epidemics. But has anybody yet made the 

 experiment whether water supplied copiously to the spare and thin 

 roots of the pear will or will not jirevent the blight, or tried the 

 same thing with the peach ? We all know the gigantic and ven- 

 erable pear trees of the Wabash and Kaskaskia country were 

 planted on the sandy second bottoms of the rivers named, where in 

 their early youth, if not in their mature age, water was always 

 within easy reach of their roots ; and we have seen the item in the 

 agricnltural papers telling how one experimenter at least, has saved 

 his pear trees from blight by copious watering. 



The prairie and timber country both are drying out and losing 

 soil moisture very much faster than we have any conception of. 

 Situations where moisture in the soil was abundant enough for all 



