GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 143 



show the vast importance of propagating from the healthiest 

 and most productive bearing trees, and never from trees in 

 nursery, except new varieties, bearing wood of which cannot 

 be had. 



TWENTY-TWO years ago I set an orchard of 180 trees one hun- 

 dred Baldwin, forty Rhode Island Greening, and forty Northern Spy, 

 the three most profitable apples, as I thought, to be set at that time. 

 After the orchard had been set 'five or six years, I concluded to 

 change the tops of the Northern Spy to Baldwin, as the Northern 

 Spy did not do very well about here at that time. Having a few 

 older Baldwin trees which were bearing fine crops of fruit, 1 selected 

 scions from them, and soon had the tops changed. 



The result was that these trees commenced bearing five or six 

 years sooner, have always borne double the quantity, and of better 

 quality, than the trees that were budded to Baldwin at the nursery, 

 and set at the same time, under the same conditions. While all are 

 now fine, healthy trees, those that were budded to Baldwin at the 

 uursery make the most wood growth, and the branches are longer 

 and more reedy. I have also noticed that, while these trees seemed 

 to have as much bloom, they would not perfect more than half as 

 much fruit as those with the changed tops. Who will tell the reason 

 of this ? The Rural New- Yorker. 



IT is probable that many trees fail to bear because propagated 

 from unproductive trees. We know that no two trees in any orchard 

 are alike, either in the amount of fruit which they bear or in their 

 vigor and habit of growth. Some are uniformly productive, and some 

 are uniformly unproductive. We know, too, that scions or buds tend 

 to reproduce the character of the tree from which they are taken. A 

 gardener would never think of taking cuttings from a rose bush or 

 chrysanthemum or carnation which does not bear flowers. Why 

 should a fruit-grower take scions from a tree which he knows to be 

 unprofitable ? 



The indiscriminate cutting of scions is too clumsy and inexact a 

 practice for these days, when we are trying to introduce scientific 

 methods into our farming. I am convinced that some trees cannot 

 be made to bear by any amount of treatment. They are not the 

 bearing kind. It is not every mare which will breed or every hen 

 which will lay a hatfull of eggs. 



In my own practice, I am buying the best nursery-grown stock of 

 apples (mostly Spy), and am top-grafting them with scions from trees 

 which please me, and which I know to have been productive during 

 many years. Time will discover if the effort is worth the while, but 

 unless all analogies fail the outcome must be to my profit. L. H. 

 BAILEY. 



MY DEAR SIR I have your letter of the seventh on my return 

 from the North, and beg to say I have read with great interest Mr. 

 H. M. Stringfellow's letter in the Alvin Sun, which was enclosed in 

 your letter. 



