298 BOAKD OF AGRICULTUKE. 



lacy in the public miud about the fibrous roots. If you go 

 to buy a tree, you will be apt to select one that has a large 

 mass of fibrous roots, and you think you must stufl* just as 

 many of those roots into the ground as you can. They are 

 perfectly worthless. You might just as well cut them all off. 

 Perhaps you cannot all see through that. You have a plant 

 of any kind with half a dozen roots, upon each of which 

 there are smaller rootlets. You, perhaps, in a circle of a foot, 

 can find a thousand fibrous rootlets. Now, supposing those 

 thousand rootlets all live, and you have got a thousand roots 

 starting from your tree within a foot, where are those thou- 

 sand roots at the end of ten years ? Have you got a thousand 

 roots, or have you got only the original four or five? If you 

 have only got four or five, what has become of the rest? 

 They simply act as the leaves act. They are deciduous. 

 They are thrown off every year. These fine, fibrous roots do 

 not live ; they die at tlie close of the year, in the same way 

 that the leaves do. It is only the roots that are larger than 

 those that live. Hence, in buying trees, you want a tree that 

 is full of small roots, but not the finer fibrous roots, because 

 those are of no use. 



Question. "Which end of the stakes do you think it is 

 best to put into the ground? 



Dr. Fisher. Ask me twenty-five years hence and I will 

 tell you, for I have them set both ways. Whenever they de- 

 cay, if you and I are here, I will tell you which decayed first. 



Question. Will you tell us how you pack your grapes ? 



Dr. Fisher. I have a series of shelves about five feet 

 long and two feet wide, or a little larger, upon which the 

 grapes are placed. These shelves are separated about four 

 inches. Each one of these is placed upon a stretcher and car- 

 ried to the vineyard by two men, and grajjes are picked and 

 laid upon them, a single layer, as close as they will lie. They 

 are then carried to the fruit-room and piled up one above the 

 other, and they are there left until they are marketed. I 

 have never succeeded in keeping grapes to any advantage. 

 All I can do is to keep them where they are. They never 

 grow any l^etter ; they do not improve ; they tend to depre- 

 ciate every moment from the time they are picked, and the 

 object is to have them depreciate as little as possible. They 



