EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PEACH. 147 



" The practice, then, of digging circles may be set 

 clown as positively injurious, by inducing cultivators 

 to believe that they are doing something really 

 useful, when in fact they are doing almost nothing 

 at all. It should be wholly discarded, and thorough 

 broadcast culture only relied upon. 



" A few years since I performed an experiment 

 to determine definitely the distance at which the 

 peach would draw nourishment through its roots. 

 A dozen trees, of the same size and variety, were 

 set out on a piece of uniform land, and were culti- 

 vated for a few years until they w^ere about ten feet 

 high, when the land was laid to grass. A portion 

 of the trees w^ere within three feet of a compost 

 heap, the rest at various distances from it. Those 

 standing nearest the compost made a summer's 

 growth of four feet eight inches. The tree that 

 stood seven feet off, almost as far as the height of 

 the tree, threw out shoots two feet five inches long. 

 The next, at a distance of fifteen feet, made shoots 

 fourteen inches long, while all others, twenty or 

 more feet distant, grew but seven inches. 



" Thus we see that a peach tree ten feet high was 

 doubled in its linear growth by a heap of manure 

 fifteen feet distant, from which only a small portion 

 of the roots on one side could derive any nour- 

 ishment, proving conclusively that the roots must 

 extend on each side to at least an equal distance ; 

 that is, that they form a radiating circle of fibers, 



