APPLES. 287 



in my recollection when the owners of those trees did not have 

 apples to sell. This year they sold from six trees, the storm 

 having broken down the seventh, 85 bushels, which would be 

 an average of a little more than 14 bushels to a tree. Now I 

 figure it out that the protection given to those trees when they 

 were young prevented them from being injured, and enabled 

 them to get a good start in life, to form better roots and more 

 of them. After they had reached a certain age, there was no 

 liability of their being injured. I think they are better trees 

 to-day for having had Lhat protection while young. 



Now, I think there is no person here who will dispute the 

 fact that there is no tree in Minnesota but what may be bene- 

 fitted by having good care taken of it in its youth. It can 

 be made to live longer and grow larger and be a better tree 

 when it is a hundred or two hundred years old for having had 

 good care for the first four or five years of its life. Now, in 

 boxing the trees with earth, I think there will be a difference 

 in the degree of cold it is called upon to sustain, but I do not 

 think that amounts to so much as the manner in which the 

 frost is taken out of the tree, or as the prevention of the re- 

 serve food supply, that is stored up in the trunk of the tree by 

 the leaves, being taken out of the tree by our extreme cold 

 dry winds. I think the trees suffer more from a loss of food 

 material by reason of these dry winds, than they do in almost 

 any other way. That food supply having been exhausted by 

 the extreme cold of December, January and February, there is 

 but very little life left in the tree when March comes, and that 

 is the time when the injury begins to be made manifest by sun- 

 scald on the south side of the tree. Now, this boxing will aid 

 in retaining that food in the tree. 



Mr. Harris: I cannot see any reason why the tree should be 

 injured by putting earth around it late enough in the fall and 

 taking it away early enough in the spring, unless that earth 

 inside of the box got too wet. One year I lost a number of 

 trees by banking them up to kee^D the mice away from them. 

 Heavy rains came on and saturated that dirt pretty thorough- 

 ly, and then there came a very sudden freeze and thaw in the 

 spring; and when I came to take that banking away the bark 

 went with it. I can conceive that the rain running down the 

 forks of the tree into a box might saturate the earth in such 

 away as to injure the bark of the tree. The most critical time 

 with our young apple trees is the first winter after they are set 

 out. If you can carry them through the first winter by this 



