176 An American Fruit-Farm 



co-workers, is physical. The great object with us 

 is to get hiimus in the earth, — decaying vegetable 

 matter in abundance. In other words, in order to 

 have live plants, we must fill the earth beneath our 

 feet with dead and decaying plants. The tree of a 

 century*s growth crashes to the earth in a tempest 

 and, decaying, feeds a greedy vegetation, till it in 

 various form matures, drops in death to the ground, 

 decays, and feeds another round of plant life. The 

 transformation of the dead and decaying oak into 

 the wild vine, the dogwood, the artichoke, the 

 hibiscus, the anemone, is a chemical, not a mere 

 physical process. We cannot explain it. We 

 witness the phenomenon and imitate it in orchard, 

 vineyard, and field. 



Soil for food purposes, — ^human food, — ^is no 

 longer in the state of nature. The cultivated 

 differs from the wild soil in degree rather than 

 in kind. The wild soil is not so productive as the 

 cultivated; the drain upon it to support plant life 

 is less. This drain is dual: partly for the plant 

 itself, the stock; partly for the fruit. The food 

 for the stock is not the food for the fruit. In 

 a wild state the plant stock gets more food than 

 does the fruit. Our chief purpose in fruit-grow- 

 ing is fruit, not stock or foliage. In a wild 

 state, the purpose appears to be the propaga- 

 tion, the continuation of plants, each after its kind. 

 Nature does not raise fruit for market. We grow 

 the fruit as it were at the expense of the plant; 

 Nature grows fruit solely to perpetuate the kind 



