102 THE APPLE VULTURIST. 



a tree were contained within a circle no larger than the 

 spread of the branches. J. J. Thomas says that the roots 

 of common grass are found to run two feet, and sometimes 

 much more. If, then, the tree-roots are but two and a half 

 feet long, making the circle five feet, they would meet and 

 come in contact with grass-roots two feet farther off, or 

 four and a half feet from the tree, requiring a circle of nine 

 feet at least to prevent the exhausting influence of the 

 grass. When the tree is two or three years older, this cir- 

 cle would need to be doubled in size. In other words, the 

 whole system of digging small spaces, and mulching small 

 circles about young trees, possesses very little utility when 

 compared with broadcast cultivation the only mode that 

 should be adopted in orchards and gardens. A tree, there- 

 fore, ten feet high, whose branches cover an area five feet 

 in diameter, reaches with its roots the circumference of a 

 circle at least twenty feet in diameter. The area of the 

 twenty-feet circle is sixteen times greater than that of the 

 five- feet circle. Thus Downing, in his directions, omitted 

 at least fifteen-sixteenths of the space covered by the roots. 

 There are many cultivators who do not keep the whole sur- 

 face mellow, that loosen a circle of soil one-half as large as 

 Downing directed. Nothing is more common than to see 

 trees ten or fifteen feet high with a pile of manure a foot 

 or two in diameter at the base of the trunk. The tree can 

 not, as a matter of course, derive any more benefit from 

 such an enriching than a starving man could be fed by 

 stuffing crackers into his boots, with his hands tied behind 

 him. If there is any one thing of great importance to fruit- 

 raisers, and which they are especially deficient in appreci- 

 ating, it is a knowledge of the wide extension of the roots 

 of trees. A greater number of essential operations in their 

 culture is founded on this knowledge, than on every thing 

 else connected with vegetable physiology. Many cultiva- 



