SEFENTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 145 



fruit or leaf is often the liectic flush of a diseased patient. 

 The bright color of the fruit of the sod-mulched trees may 

 be purchased at the expense of the vigor and the health of 

 the tree. 



The later ripening period of the fruit on the tilled plat 

 would be a defect with some varieties and in some localities, 

 but in general in New York late ripening is an advantage. 



Fruit from both plats for the four years has been kept 

 in cold storage to test the relative keeping qualities. This 

 work has been in charge of Mr. G. H. Powell, the cold stor- 

 age expert of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 who writes me in brief : ''There appears to have been little 

 practical difference in keeping quality between fruit from sod 

 land and fruit picked a few days later from the tilled land." 



There is no difference in quality. If one shuts his eyes 

 to the color and eats a Baldwin from a mulched and from a 

 tilled tree from the two plats, he can detect no difference if 

 the fruit be of the same degree of ripeness. 



In considering the causes of the differences noted 

 between the two systems of management, we can do little 

 more than state the hypotheses which seem to account for the 

 results. The experiment is by no means concluded and defi- 

 nite reasons cannot be advanced until all the proof is in. Yet 

 it seems to me I am warranted in offering the following 

 hypotheses : 



1st. Plant-food is more available in the tilled plat than 

 in the sod plat. That there is an abundance of the plant-food 

 necessary for the welfare of the trees and the production of 

 crops, in both plats, is certain. For the trees in the tilled 

 plat showed, in all respects, good feeding, and such trees in 

 the sod-mulch plat as could get any considerable portion of 

 their roots in soil where there were no grass roots, likewise 

 seemed to be well fed. Moreover, tW'O of the chief elements 

 of plant food, potash and phosphoric acid, were added to a 

 part of the trees in each plat for three successive seasons and 

 without appreciable results in cither case. It is evident that 

 there is plent\- of food in the sod land, l)ut for some reason 



