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much better for not having been -'forced.' In planting out, 

 trees have been placed in soil without the least preparation, 

 in holes just sufficient to receive all the roots, with a little 

 crowding. The bruised ends of the roots left untrimmed, 

 and the whole operation, in fact, performed very much as a 

 fence post would be set, and the tree is too often rivalled in 

 its growth by the post. 



These modes'of treatment, however, we are happy to be- 

 lieve, are practised less generally than they were a few years 

 since. Better ideas have begun to prevail among tree plant- 

 ers. A fruit tree is getting to be considered as having an or- 

 ganism endowed with life, and governed by similar physio- 

 logical laws as are other living things. Its wants and neces- 

 sities are becoming better understood and appreciated, and 

 we have 'corresponding hope for the future. Bat that this 

 knowledge is not shared by the whole community, every 

 day's observation compels us to believe. 



When we see a fruit tree of any variety, that has been set 

 from one to five or ten years, having in that time made but 

 a comparatively trifling growth of wood, surrounded by a 

 tough sward, or what is perhaps quite as common, and fully 

 as detrimental, a thrifty, rank growth of a circle of weeds 

 and suckers, abstracting from the soil all those nutritive ele- 

 ments that should have been appropriated by the tree itself, 

 which latter receives no accession of wood from year to year, 

 but becomes covered with moss, and bears all the marks of 

 premature old age, we are forced to the conclusion that the 

 owner is either ignorant, or grossly negligent. That he is 

 .either quite unaware of the mode in which the tree obtains 

 •its limited supply of nourishment from the soil, or that he is 

 entirely careless of its cultivation, because its crop is not a 

 marketable one. He does not appreciate the fact that the 

 thrifty growth of a fruit tree is worth infinitely more for a few 

 years than its meagre crop of imperfect fruit. The difficulty 

 is with him as with some corporations which have closed their 

 construction account prematurely, and are consequently obliged 



