Forest and Orchard Unlike. 135 



ground, wholly omitting the stirring of the soil, for 

 this is the method of the forest ; and forest lands 

 increase in fertility from year to year and the mois- 

 ture is held in them as in a sponge. The reason- 

 ing is plausible. There are two ways of testing it, 

 by experience and by reflection. It needs only to 

 be suggested that the experiment has been tried, and 

 is now trying, upon an extended scale, as a large 

 part of the apple orchards of the country testify. 

 The chief .beneficiaries of the experiment are the 

 bugs, mice and fungi, all of which would vote the 

 method a success. The reasons why the forest 

 method is successful 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 ex- 

 tensive as to produce a climate 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 obtained upon trees which 

 are unpruned and unthinned. The objects to be 

 attained in the forest and in the orchard are wholly 

 unlike. In one case it is the perpetuation of the 

 species, and there results a severe conflict for exist- 

 ence, in which more plants die than reach maturity; 

 in the other it is the securing of an abnormal pro- 

 duct of the plant, a product which can be kept up 

 to its abnormal or artificial development only by 



