148 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and widely ; and that it converts the root zone into a com- 

 modious and sanitar_v Hving-place for the soil organisms". 



6th. The grass may have a toxic or poisonous effect on 

 apple trees. At the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Western 

 New York Society, the speaker gave an account of a series 

 of pot experiments, which seemed to show that grass roots in 

 some way poisoned peach trees growing. The United States 

 Department of Agriculture has published a number of obser- 

 vations and experiments to show that different plants grow- 

 ing in the same soil may poison each other. 



I am able to give also the results of a most excellent 

 series of experiments planned and carried out on the Woburn 

 Experimental Farm in England. These experiments were 

 planned to show the effects of growing trees in grass, the 

 latter to be used as a mulch. The following gives the gist of 

 the results of the experiments in question : 



"As to the general effect produced by grass on young 

 apple trees, the results of the last few years have brought 

 forward nothing which can in any way modify our previous 

 conclusions as to the deleterious nature of this effect, and we 

 can only repeat that no ordinary form of ill treatment — 

 including even the combination of bad planting, growth of 

 weeds and total neglect — is so harmful to the trees as grow- 

 ing grass round them. * * * * The evidence which we 

 shall bring forward will, we believe, be sufficient to dispose of 

 the views that the grass effect is due to an interference with 

 either the food supply, the water supply or the air supply of 

 the tree, and that it must in all probability be attributed to 

 the action of some product, direct or indirect, of grass growth 

 which exercises an actively poisonous effect on the roots of 

 the tree." I do not put forth the statement that grass poisons 

 the apple as one having been proved, but I say that it may 

 be so. 



In conclusion, the reader is warned that particular cases 

 do not warrant general conclusions. The Auchter experi- 

 ment is in many respects a particular case, and the apple 

 grower must bear in mind that under other conditions, his 

 own perhaps, the trees might have behaved differently. The 



