68 The Principles of Fruit-growing 



Aside from these related experiences, the theoretical 

 considerations in favor of tillage are so clear and forcible 

 that they amount to a demonstration of the superiority 

 of tillage over sod or grain for apple orchards. 



My older readers will recall that until recent years the 

 effort of farmers has been directed to the growing of hay, 

 grain and live-stock. Previous to this generation, the grow- 

 ing of fruit had been a matter of secondary or even inci- 

 dental importance. A bit of rocky or waste land, or an 

 odd corner about the buildings, was usually given over to 

 the apple orchard, and if the trees received any attention 

 whatever it was after all other demands of the farm had 

 been satisfied. The apple and standard pear orchards 

 of the country still record the old method. It has required 

 at least a generation of men in which completely to estab- 

 lish any new agricultural system, and the time is not yet 

 fully arrived for the passing out of the old orchards and 

 the coming in of the new. In other fruits than apples and 

 standard pears, the generations of trees are comparatively 

 short-lived, and those fruits sooner feel the effect of new 

 agricultural teaching. Vineyards, and orchards of plums, 

 dwarf pears, apricots, cherries, and quinces, have mostly 

 come into existence along with the transition movement 

 from the old to the new farming, and they have been 

 planted seriously, with the expectation of profit, the same 

 as have the grain crops. Peaches had passed out hi most 

 parts of the East, and they came in again with the new 

 agriculture. At the present time, men buy farms for the 

 sole purpose of raising fruit, a venture which would 

 have been a novelty fifty years ago; but the habit of imi- 

 tation is so strong that the apple-planter patterns after the 

 old orchards that were grown under another and now a 

 declining system of agriculture, and many of which are 



