PLANTING 31 



trenched. The roots of the trees were not trimmed, they were 

 huddled into small holes, and then rammed into the ground. 

 The branches of the trees, however, were duly cut back, and 

 they were in every respect other than the method of their 

 planting, treated in orthodox fashion. 



Though these trees, when compared with their carefully 

 planted fellows in the neighbouring plot, showed some deficiency 

 in leaf-vigour, especially during the first year after planting, they 

 showed an excess of vigour, both as regards the number of 

 shoots and the length of new wood formed, the excess of this 

 latter amounting to 31 per cent, in the second year. In the 

 four sets of repetitions of these experiments which were made at 

 the farm in subsequent years under the superintendence of 

 different managers, it should be noticed the roughly planted 

 trees in all cases showed some deficiency in leaf-vigour during the 

 first season after planting, though this always disappeared later 

 on, and was generally succeeded by an increased vigour during 

 the next two seasons ; but when the trees were lifted at the end 

 of three years, and the increase in their weight since planting 

 determined, it was found that in all cases there was a considerable 

 balance in favour of those which had been roughly planted, 

 ranging from 17 per cent, up to as much as 417 per cent. The 

 trees examined in these series included dwarf and standard 

 apples, and dwarf pears and plums, whilst the character of 

 the soil in which they were planted varied considerably in the 

 different cases. 



As a result of these experiments it was concluded that the 

 increase in vigour consequent on adopting rough methods of 

 planting must be accepted as a reality, and a search was in- 

 stituted to ascertain which particular feature of this rough 

 treatment was responsible for such a result. At the same time 

 steps were taken to place the main facts on a more extended 

 basis', by enlisting the kind offices of fruit growers in various 

 parts of the country to make trials of rough planting, allow- 

 ing measurements of the growth of these trees and of the 

 corresponding carefully planted ones to be taken after one and 

 two years. Including the experiments made at the Fruit Farm, 

 these trials took place in different localities from Cornwall in 

 the west, to Cambridgeshire in the east, and Cheshire in the 

 north, and, besides apples, pears and plums, they included 

 cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, damsons, gooseberries, 

 raspberries and currants. Reckoning each kind or variety of 

 tree examined as one set, there were 146 sets, comprising nearly 



