WINTER MEETING. 153 



T am very anxious to hear from Judge WilkersoD, of Altenburg. He 

 has an orchard of 100 trees of Ben Davis apples, 10 years old. He 

 was afraid the woolly aphis were going to destroy his trees, and he 

 sprinkled a gallon of pure coal oil under each tree, and I asked him to 

 send a report of the result to this meeting. I think this will kill woolly 

 aphis. I think woolly aphis kill a great many of our trees, and we can 

 overcome them to some extent by good cultivation. The woolly aphis 

 will attack roots. I think deeper planting a protection against these, 

 and the best protection is good, thorough cultivation. 



Maj. Holsinger— 1 agree with what has been said about planting 

 the tree about as deep as nature had it in the nursery row, but I should 

 take three things into consideration with trees so planted: First, that 

 the ground is loose, and will settle some after the tree is planted? 

 second, that when the frost recedes the next spring, the new tree' 

 newly set, has been lifted out of the ground ; third, in the spring we 

 generally have a great deal of wet weather, and the ground is soft all 

 around the tree, and the winds come from all directions in this West- 

 ern country, and they will lift a tree out of the ground. I was well 

 acquainted with a man who had a 60-acre orchard, who left a great deal 

 of his planting to an Irishman who followed nature, and did not get 

 the trees quite deep enough, and did not take into consideration these 

 three things, and the next spring some of those trees were lying flat on 

 the ground. The winds and frosts and looseness of the ground had 

 made that orchard a flat failure. The same result will be produced in 

 the tree by aphis that comes from root rot. As far as this question of 

 fungus is concerned, the tree begins to rot somewhat, and the bark of 

 the tree begins to decay around the collar before the inside. Wher- 

 ever there is any rot formed there is a fungus formed. In the first 

 place, on roots of the tree where all others have died, wherever on 

 these roots a new sprout has sprung up, this fungus has not gone any 

 further than the root to the place where the sprout came up, I think 

 the root is perfectly healthy, and no sign of fungus. If that fungus 

 killed the tree it is almost a question of proof if it would not have 

 killed that sprout. Another reason : You will find that on these trees 

 a great number of them it seems that the bark has been broken. This 

 bark around the collar of the tree has been hardened, being under the 

 ground, and not being exposed to the elements it hardened, and the 

 thawing and the frosting and the prevention of the sun and wind com- 

 ing to that part of the tree makes that tree so hard that when the 

 process goes downward, frequently this bark will be broken by the 

 effort of the tree itself to force the sap down into the root. Wher- 

 ever you see a tree that is girdled this way, it shows that if the tree 



