66 The Principles of Fruit-growing 



for the forest are because the trees stand so thickly that 

 the earth is protected from the drying effect of sun 

 and winds, the forest cover is so extensive as to produce 

 a climat9 of its own, all the product is returned to the 

 soil, and there is no haste. In every one of these essentials 

 the orchard is unlike the forest. Those writers who urge 

 that the orchard be planted thick enough to imitate the 

 forest condition should also make it clear how the insects 

 and fungi are to be kept at bay, or how acceptable fruit 

 can be secured on trees that are unpruned, unthinned and 

 untamed. The objects to be attained in the forest and in 

 the orchard are wholly unlike. In one case it is the per- 

 petuation of the species, and there results a severe conflict 

 for existence, in which more plants die than reach ma- 

 turity; in the other it is the securing of an abnormal prod- 

 uct of the plant, a product that can be held to its 

 abnormal or artificial development only by abnormal con- 

 ditions, and the struggle for existence is reduced to its 

 lowest terms, for it is desired that not a single plant be 

 lost. Because it is impossible to imitate the forest 

 conditions, the forest methods cannot be followed in 

 fruit-plantations. 



Now that we have come to understand why and how 

 it is that the stirring of the surface earth makes plants 

 thrive, the old-time drudgery of tillage becomes the most 

 important, the most suggestive, and therefore the most 

 difficult properly to understand and perform of all farming 

 operations. If we cannot have the protection of the forest 

 cover and the forest mulch, we must make a mulch for 

 the occasion; and if we wait impatiently for results, we 

 must unlock the granaries of the soil more rapidly than 

 Nature does. We must till for tillage's sake, and not wait 

 to be forced into the operation as men have generally 



