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when they are in full bloom, there comes a heavy shower, a thnnder 

 shower for instance, and we have little or no fruit that season. Many 

 attribute it to the influence thunder and lightning has on the blossoms, 

 saying that if there is thunder and lightning when the trees arc in full 

 bloom the crop will be ruined for that year. This is a mistaken idea ; 

 if one will examine and see how an apple blossom is formed, he will 

 find that it is composed of stamens and pistil, or the male and female 

 organs of the flower, and calyx and corolla, or what might be called 

 the leaves of tlie flower. The stamens, /or male organs of the flower, 

 produce a yellow dust or powder called pollen, which comes in con- 

 tact with the end of the pistil and fertilizes it : if there should be a 

 dashing rain this yellow dust or pollen will be washed away and the 

 pistil will go unfertilized, the flower drops off and the crop becomes a 

 failure. The reason why people attribute the failure to thunder and 

 lightning, is probably because a thunder shower is more of a dashing 

 rain than our other showers, and more apt to wash away the pollen. 



The great obstacle in the way of many farmers planting apple trees 

 is that they bear only every other year, and tlie yeai'S they do bear 

 apples are so plenty that one hardly knows what to do with them, 

 while the next year they do not bear at all. Tliere must be some 

 reason why trees bear one year and not the next, and if we can find 

 out the cause, is there not a chance of changing the bearing years of 

 our apple trees, so that they will bear moderate crops every year, or 

 large crops the odd years. The production of fruit tends to weaken 

 the tree, and tlie larger crops a tree bears the more will it be weak- 

 ened or exhausted, so that all the nourishment or plant food the tree 

 can prepare is used in ripening its fruit, and there is none left to de- 

 velope fruit buds for the coming season ; the result is our trees bear 

 only every other year. 



In the rich prairies of the AVest apple trees bear more or less every 

 year. I think this Avas the case when it was first settled about here, 

 but continual cropping has so exhausted the soil and tiie trees, that 

 they cannot obtain and prepare sufficient plant-food to ripen a crop of 

 fruit and develope fruit buds tlie same season. If the bearing only 

 every other year is due to over-bearing these years, exhaustion of the 

 soil or trees, as it undoubtedly is to some or all of these causes, we 

 have it in our power to change the bearing years of our fruit trees and 

 make them bear the years we want them to bear. This is something 

 worth giving particular attention to, for if trees can be made to bear 



