CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 83 



fact is, we inherit our opinions and ideas just as well as the 

 peculiarities of our bodies, and so true is this that the con- 

 trary of their beliefs is positively unthinkable to many men. 

 An instance of this came to me in a letter from one of our 

 most progressive Texas nurserymen. He wrote: "I have 

 been practicing close root-pruning with perfect success for 

 some years, and yet my father, who is seventy years old, and 

 sees the good results every year, won' t admit them, but persists 

 in saying that ' if the roots were not necessary they wouldn't 

 be put there.' " So firmly, indeed, has this long-root fallacy 

 become imbedded in the human mind by ages of practice, 

 that even a man of Chas. Downing's eminence in horticulture 

 declares in his great work that the " ideal transplanting" 

 would be to take up a tree with its roots entire. That this 

 would be absolutely the very worst form, anyone can easily 

 demonstrate for himself. Let him take, for instance, two 

 peach or other tree seeds, and plant a few inches apart in, 

 say a ten-inch pot of good, rich soil. At the end of next 

 year, let him take them out and carefully shake off all the soil 

 from the roots, and plant side by side in the open ground. 

 Let him spread out in a large hole all the roots of one tree, 

 according to the inherited regulation method, and cut back 

 all on the other to about one inch, and the top to one foot, 

 just enough to allow of its being stuck down about six inches, 

 like a cutting. Treat alike, and in two years the root-pruned 

 tree will be many times larger than the other. And right 

 here I wish to say, very particularly, that the great superior- 

 ity of close root-pruning is not always so apparent the first 

 year, the tree giving more attention to striking deep roots 

 than making top. Even for several years, we all know that 

 trees as ordinarily set do well, but this is due to the fact that 

 a large amount of root is removed even then. But a com- 

 parison with these will prove that when the strain of fruit- 

 bearing comes, the close-pruned tree, with its roots deep and 

 strong, out of reach of the plow, winter's cold and summer's 

 heat and drouth, will stand up for many years, giving good 

 crops, long after the other, with its lateral and surface sys- 

 tem, has broken down and died. How else are we to 



