192 An American Fruit-Farm 



disintegrated, dissolved, changed from solidity to 

 fluid and gas and has fed this spread of root! 

 Cycles of geologic time mean no more than leaf, 

 bud, flower, and fruit to the plant, and ever that the 

 same organ or part of the plant may be capable 

 of perpetuating its kind — of repeating its life his- 

 tory. Nature may not succeed, but ever essays 

 immortality of flora and fauna. Doubtless in 

 some later geologic age, aeons hence, this planet 

 will be clothed with a plant life as different from 

 this we know as is this from the plant life of the 

 Age of Fishes or of the Coal Measures. 



However, our business as fruit-growers is not 

 with palm trees and gigantic ferns which turn 

 into anthracite, or with trees of ages hence which 

 may turn into dynamos. Our business is with 

 the tree and vine of to-day; to respect its habits; 

 to feed it well, and ourselves to feed on it. Nature 

 teaches us how to mix our soil for what we call 

 profit. But Nature and we have somewhat differ- 

 ent purposes. She makes soil solely to perpetuate 

 plants, each after its kind; we make soil solely to 

 raise fruit — ^that is, what we call fruit, — not, as 

 Nature would say, the seed that will reproduce the 

 plant, but the fruit we use as food, which in our 

 apple, peach, grape, cherry, prune, currant, or 

 berry is not the true seed but the pulp that grows 

 or forms about the seed, primarily as nourishment 

 when the seed shall start to germinate. There- 

 fore a fruit-farm is really a pulp-garden. The 

 edible part of our fruits is the pulp. We throw 



