EFFECTS OF CULTIVATION. 99 



all cultivated stone fruits in the eastern half of the United 

 States mature their crops within a period of about ten days, 

 and drop very easily from the trees, while last summer the 

 papers told us that California lost vast sums by the sudden 

 and premature ripening of the fruit from intense heat. Is 

 there any wonder, when the trees had been robbed by deep 

 and frequent cultivation of the very roots which are so essen- 

 tial to perfect, natural fruit ? But not only does cultivation 

 thus rush all fruit to premature ripening, but it is, beyond all 

 doubt, the sole cause of certain pears like the Le Conte, 

 Clapp's Favorite and other summer pears rotting at the core. 

 Before I put my Le Conte orchard, near Galveston, to sod, 

 they were always thus affected, but never after. There is a 

 sod Clapp's Favorite tree near me whose fruit hangs long and 

 never rots at the core. 



I come now to the last and most remarkable of all the bad 

 effects of the destruction of the feeding surface roots of fruit 

 trees, an effect never before suspected by any observer, nor 

 even by myself, until last summer, and yet so plain that it 

 cannot be doubted. I refer to the fact that long continued 

 cultivation has deteriorated or degraded all our fruits, until 

 many of them are utterly unlike their original types. Some 

 actually have changed the color of the skin and flesh, like 

 the Gonzales plum, and all are far inferior in quality and 

 texture to the same varieties grown continuously on trees 

 whose roots have not been disturbed. For instance, take the 

 Ben Davis apple, which, with the Gonzales plum, seems to 

 be exceedingly subject to this influence. I have often in the 

 past seen Ben Davis barrels opened here, and have eaten the 

 fruit, crisp, juicy, sweet a really good apple. The next week, 

 perhaps, another lot would be dry, mealy and tasteless. Al- 

 luding to this fact, last fall, Mr. F. M. Ramsey, of this place, 

 told me that while on a recent visit to the Boston mountains 

 in Arkansas, he saw a Ben Davis orchard on a small aban- 

 doned place that had grown up in brush and some quite large 

 forest trees, and that he had been greatly surprised to find 

 the fruit, of which the trees were full, large and of excellent 

 quality, entirely unlike the dry, mushy Ben usually seen. It 



