SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOUK-PART X. 637 



of the main branches. Young bearing trees cut back to two-year-old 

 wood and to three or four-year-old wood in older trees, leaving stubs 

 of limbs three to four feet long, gave the best results. Judgment is 

 required not to leave too much wood, which gives a weak growth and 

 high heads, and not to cut back so far into the dormant wood that buds 

 will fail to start. 



The results of all these observations indicate that it is exceedingly 

 difficult to tell in the early spring the exact condition of fruit trees 

 as regards the extent of the winter injury, and that it is the part of 

 wisdom to moderately prune the orchard and give it an opportunity to 

 grow at least one season before the trees are finally removed. The 

 trees are aided in their recovery by thorough cultivation and an appli- 

 cation of some good fertilizer. 



ALFALFA IN SCOTT COUNTY. 



Chas. H. Lau, Mount Joy, Iowa, Before Scott County Farmers' Institute. 



In the face of high priced land and a possible return of crop failures 

 for low prices for farm produce or both at the same time it behooves 

 the farmer in order to make his income tally with his investment and 

 guard himself against emergencies, to be constantly on the alert for 

 such farm improvements and the introduction of such new plants and 

 grains and live stock as commend themselves to a careful and con- 

 servative judgment. No one thing today is engrossing the attention of 

 the farmers of the humid states more than the introduction and culture 

 of alfalfa, and its discussion was never more appropriate and timely 

 than it is now at the farmers' institutes. Realizing full well, we farm- 

 ers east of the Missouri river, that alfalfa has proven a veritable god- 

 send to that large tract of arid lands comprising the extreme western 

 states, some marked in our old geographies as the "great American 

 Desert," yet the mistaken idea, that, though the higher and drier 

 altitudes were its natural home, its introduction into the more eastern 

 states would of necessity prove useless, has discouraged individual effort 

 and for many years retarded its adoption in the humid states. But so 

 marvelous were the tales of this magic plant as a fertilizer and a feed 

 producer and so well authenticated were the reports that individual 

 effort again became stimulated, and experiment stations all over the 

 country were actuated to determine the causes of its failure in the 

 humid states and point out the road to success. As a result much light 

 has been shed on this all-absorbing subject. Luxuriant, heavy alfalfa 

 fields have become an established fact in all the middle and eastern 

 states, Illinois reporting alfalfa from every county except two and an ag- 

 gregate of 10,000 acres, of course more or less imperfect, due to causes 

 with which present knowledge might have been overcome by artificial 

 means. Although we may not be able to achieve those marvelous re- 

 sults secured in Its natural home with comparatively little attention, 

 or on irrigated lands, yet to see Scott county in the dry falls when 

 everything is seared and parched by a brassy sun, studded with sipots 

 of luxuriant green like oases in a desert seems to all indications a near 



