242 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



Thus, by plowing under a crop of peas or clover every second year, the 

 orchardist may return to the soil the nitrogen his crop has taken. Ten hundred 

 lbs. of unleached wood ashes per acre would fully restore the potash used during 

 the same period, and about half the phosphoric acid, while the deficiency in this 

 latter article could easily be made up by an application once in three or four 

 years of 300 or 400 lbs. of superphosphate of lime per acre. 



I trust I have succeeded in making clear to you the important facts I have 

 endeavored to present, and that you will ever bear in mind a maxim, the truth 

 of which should be impressed on the mind of every fruit grower and every 

 farmer — feed the soil and it will feed you. — Prof. Saunders, before Nova 

 Scotia Fruit Growers. 



Remedial Use of Apples. — Chemically the apple is composed of vege- 

 table fiber, albumen, sugar, gum chlorophyl, malic acid, gallic acid, lime, and 

 much water. Furthermore, the German analysts say that the apple contains a 

 larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit or vegetable. The phos- 

 phorus is admirably adapted for renewing the essential nervous matter — lecithin 

 — of the brain and spinal cord. It is, perhaps, for the same reason, rudely 

 understood, that old Scandinavian traditions represent the apple as the food of 

 the gods, who, when they felt themselves to be growing feeble and infirm, 

 resorted to this fruit, renewing their powers of mind and body. Also, the acids 

 of the apple are of singular use for men of sedentary habits, whose livers are slug- 

 gish in action, those acids serving to eliminate from the body noxious matters, 

 which, if retained, would make brain heavy and dull, or bring about jaundice or 

 skin eruptions and other allied troubles. Some such experience must have led 

 to the custom of taking apple sauce with roast pork, rich goose, and like dishes. 

 The malic acid of ripe apples, either raw or cooked, will neutralize any excess of 

 chalky matter engendered by eating too much meat. It is also the fact that such 

 ripe fruits as the apple, the pear, and the plum, when taken ripe and without 

 sugar, diminish acidity in the stomach, rather than provoke it. Their vegetable 

 sauces and juices are converted into alkaline carbonates, which tend to counter- 

 act acidity. — North American Practitioner. 



Pruning. — In the last report of the American Pomological Society, a 

 writer on pruning, protests against this dreadful violation of nature, maintaining 

 that every branch cut off is an attack upon the vitality of the tree, and an injury 

 to it — I have not the volume at hand to refer to it. In a drier climate, 

 trees may make less wood, but in this country, keeping wood-growth in check 

 by disbudding, pinching off and removing superfluous wood is imperative to 

 fruitfulness. I have had trees twenty years old, absolutely barren and worthless, 

 until half, or more than half, of the wood had been removed, that were thencefor- 

 ward annual bearers. With fruit trees, the object sought is not timber or fire- 

 wood, but fruit, and this can only be attained by limiting wood-growth. — Ex. 



