16 State Horticultural Society. 



twenty bv forty feet, the other thirty-font by thirty-six. iWe much pre- 

 fer the latter distance. 



Another reason why orchards are not good when they are old is the 

 lack of protection from insects and fungi. From several years obser- 

 vation I am led to believe that more trees are lost and rendered unpro- 

 ductive from the destructive effects of fungi . in its various forms than 

 from all other causes combined. I once went to a celebrated oculist, 

 thinking I had something in my eyes. He remarked, "Oh, no ; there 

 is nothing in your eyes, they are just inflamed ;" but I insisted that there 

 must be something in them, but he insisted there Avas not, and the phy- 

 sician knows. 



How many of us know what fungus is and how to combat it? How 

 many of us could tell the truth and the whole truth about it if placed 

 upon the witness stand? Kow many professors are agreed upon it? 

 One tells us the spores of scab fungi do not live on the trees over winter. 

 One member of this society recommended that we thoroughly spray the 

 •ground under the trees, but suppose the leaves had been burned in the 

 fall and the ground plowed, would the spores wiggle through the ground 

 and climb into the tree? A certain colored brother in Alabama was ex- 

 plaining to his congregation the theory of the creation of man. He 

 went on to say, "And de Law^d, he made Adam out ob de clay ob de 

 garden, an' he set him up agni de palin' ter dry." At this point a young 

 brother arose and enquired : "Uncle Peter, who made de palin' " "Set 

 'down dar, you nigah, any such questions as that would spile any system 

 'O'f theology." A man has a good crop or two and he at once sets up an 

 elaborate theory about cultivation, bud developments, etc., duly to have 

 his pet theories demolished by next year's failures. Who can tell us 

 why this good old orchard of ours that bloomed so full the past spring 

 failed to set a big crop of apples. Was it because they were not properly 

 pruned, cultivated, sprayed, etc? IVearly all of these things we have 

 done from their youth up. Some men could walk into the orchard, look 

 np wisely at the trees and tell us instantly. "Frost killed them," says 

 one, "Too many of one variety, self sterile," says another ; "Need some 

 compound medicated tree vitalizer," says a third. There is, however, 

 one obscure cause often overlooked. Some pesky nurseryman some 

 twenty years ago may have palmed trees on us whose pedigrees were a 

 little shaky. 



On general principles it may be stated that those who love the bus- 

 iness of fruit-growing and give it their best thought and closest attention 

 should, and generally do, succeed best, yet we are compelled to admit 

 even then there is nuich truth in that unique poem called "Homeopathic 



