140 SCIENCE AND FRUIT GROWING 



expected to remedy alternations in the fruiting of trees, and to 

 induce more regular cropping, was examined, by removing the 

 blossoms or fruit from apple trees of four different varieties. In 

 one case all the blossoms were removed, and in another they 

 were all left ; whilst in other cases the fruit was removed when 

 it was of about half its full-grown diameter. The effect on the 

 trees was measured by the growth which they made during the 

 season. The results indicated that this effect was nil, unless 

 the thinning was done on the blossoms. 



Half- 

 grown 



Blossoms- fruits Fruits 



removed. removed. left. 



Relative Growth, 1917 100 66 75 



These results which require further extension, rendered im- 

 possible in 1918 by the failure of the crop are in harmony with 

 the fact that the greatest drain on the tree occurs when the fruit 

 is forming, not when it is developing (p. 106), but, of course, 

 it bears only indirectly on the question of the effect of thinning 

 in one season to increase the crop in the subsequent year, the 

 probability being that if nothing but very early thinning is effec- 

 tive on the growth, nothing but such early thinning will be 

 effective on the subsequent behaviour of the tree in other 

 respects. 



