'62 AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND THE FARMER : 



trunk; and the weight of prunings. To the ordinary reader 

 some of these points maj^ appear to be hardly of sufficient import- 

 ance to justify such a large expenditure of labour, but the scientist 

 knows only too well that if his results are to be of general appUca- 

 tion and unquestioned utility, all avenues of information must 

 be explored, and every loophole for error must as far as possible 

 be closed. 



Manuring. 



Having now arrived at methods which can give the grower 

 control of flower formation, which may be regarded as the first 

 step on the road to crop production, it remains to be learnt what 

 is the maximum crop which a tree is capable of carrying, and 

 how flower formation can be translated into crop production. 

 This leads naturally on to questions affecting the nutrition of the 

 tree, among which those concerned with manurial treatment 

 occupy a prominent place. In this country it is a recognised 

 practice of all our prominent fruit-growers to apply heavy 

 dressings of fertilisers on their plantations, and large sums of 

 money are spent annually in this way. It is not surprising there- 

 fore to find that the advice of the technical horticulturist is often 

 sought on the subject of the manuring of fruit crops, and in giving 

 advice the latter is in a much less fortunate position than the 

 agriculturist, inasmuch as the results obtained in previous 

 experiments on the manuring of fruit crops have beeen very in- 

 conclusive and in many cases entirely contradictory. Most of 

 the experiments on this subject have been carried out in America, 

 where climatic conditions, methods of cultivation, etc., are 

 admittedly very different from those obtaining in this country, 

 and it is doubtful whether the results secured would in any case 

 be appHcable to the conditions existing here. 



At Long Ashton, it has long been felt that the need for definite 

 information on the effects of the various constituents of manures 

 on fruit trees, bushes, etc. is very great, and experiments have 

 been commenced recently to study these effects. The preliminary 

 work is being carried out with pot cultures of trees, bushes, and 

 plants in order that the conditions of experiment may be more 

 strictly controhed, and the observations made in greater detail 

 than is possible under field conditions. The object of the series 

 of experiments now in progress is to ascertain the effects of omit- 

 ting the various chemical constituents of a complete plant food 

 from the diets of apple trees and strawberry plants grown under 

 the conditions described above. In order to accompHsh this 

 end, batches of apple trees and strawberry plants have been 

 'divided into several series, one series of each being fed with a 



