224 THE APPLE CULTUMIST. 



orchards on the prairies must be shielded by belts of ever- 

 greens during the severity of winter. By heeding all the 

 suggestions alluded to in the preceding paragraphs, and 

 particularly the directions laid down in Chapter I., a failure 

 of an apple-orchard will be of rare occurrence. ../" 



Cause of Barrenness in Apple-trees. Barrenness and in- 

 different productiveness of apple-trees arise from numerous 

 causes. In most instances, the difficulty is in the barren 

 soil rather than in a tree. Yet, when a part of the trees 

 are productive, the evidence is conclusive that the fault is 

 in the tree. In many instances, some of the largest trees 

 in the orchard rarely yield a bushel of fruit, while those on 

 either side of them yield abundant crops. Dr. Hull, an 

 eminent pomologist, states that apple-trees that expend all 

 their forces in the production of wood-growth can produce 

 little or no fruit. Indeed, it is not possible for any tree to 

 produce a fruit germ, and not again in some way disor- 

 ganize it, unless the wood-growth shall cease in time for 

 the leaves to elaborate food enough to grow both leaf and 

 fruit the following year, or until a part of the leaves shall 

 attain to nearly or quite their full size. That this is so, will 

 be apparent when we consider that the leaves which first 

 appear in the spring were formed in the bud the previous 

 year, perfect in all their parts, and in the embryo state con- 

 tained each individual cell found in them when fully grown. 

 In order to produce an abundant crop of fruit, the exten- 

 sion of the shoots must cease a long time before the end of 

 the growing season, so that the wood may mature and the 

 fruit-buds develop. 



The question may arise, if there is no addition to the 

 number of cells, how do the leaves grow ? The answer is, 

 that the only difference we can see, between an embryo leaf 

 and one fully grown, is in the size of the leaf-cells. As 

 growth begins in the spring, these small cells, which were 



