2IO An American Fruit-Farm 



sailors. Nature produces plant and fruit, each 

 after its kind, but whether wild or cultivated 

 depends upon the fruit-grower working through 

 the soil. Having selected in the climatic belt 

 the site for your fruit-farm ; having selected your 

 fruit-stock, the varieties you purpose raising ; hav- 

 ing made your soil, learned its character, quali- 

 ties, strength, and weakness; knowing what your 

 plants need and how to supply the need, your 

 fruit-farm is an organism functioned for action 

 and service: a machine to be run. 



More than two thousand years ago, Cato, writ- 

 ing on farm-management, asks: "What is the 

 first principle of good agriculture? To plow well. 

 What is the second? To plow again; and the third 

 is to manure.'* Translated into the experience of 

 our race, since man first ran a crooked stick over 

 the surface of the ground and scratched the soil in 

 cultivation, the old Roman's counsel is: *'Feed your 

 land and ctiltivate your soil." 



