48 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



pended. I am well aware that many other causes have conspired, of 

 late years, to prevent apple trees with an abundance of fruit buds 

 from producing and maturing fruits such as cold ; protracted rains 

 when in blossom, preventing pollenation ; severe frosts while in bloom 

 or afterwards ; fungus on young fruit, or on fruit stems or on the 

 leaves ; but, when no bloom appears and no fruit buds are found, it is 

 in vain that we look for fruit. The shortening-in process would not 

 be necessary every year. If practical once or twice, it might throw 

 the trees into fruitfulness, and then the check upon growth caused by 

 bearing fruit might promote the formation of fruit buds. P. C. 

 REYNOLDS, in Green's Fruit- Grower. 



The unfruitfulness Mr. Reynolds here alludes to is plainly 

 the result of propagating from non-bearing or unproductive 

 trees. Instead of the "many other causes" why trees with 

 an abundance of fruit buds fail to bear, if he had laid the 

 trouble to the annual destruction of their surface roots by 

 the plow and cultivator, upon which roots all trees depend 

 for the setting of their fruit, he would have hit the nail on the 

 head. Every fruit-grower can find evidence of this around 

 him, and the experience of others elsewhere in this book con- 

 firms it. While it is a fact that evaporation is less from a 

 cultivated surface than one in a close-mowed sod, a fair test 

 with a seedling or a root-pruned tree will demonstrate in 

 every case that this loss of moisture is far over-balanced by 

 the service rendered the tree by its unbroken surface roots. 

 The superiority of all forest, shade and nut trees, as well as 

 seedling fruit trees, in uncultivated ground proves this. But 

 here let me again impress upon my readers that in all I have 

 to say about non-cultivation and close mowing around fruit 

 trees, reference is made solely to those grown from seed where 

 they stand, or to close root-pruned ones. While it will cause 

 surface-rooted trees to frequently shed their fruit, and will 

 ultimately shorten their lives, cultivation for them is a neces- 

 sary evil. 



