PROPAGATION. 127 



without much explanation. The broad steel blade runs 

 under the rows and is drawn by four horses, two working 

 one before the other, or tandem, each side of the row. 

 Some of our Western nurserymen find great advantage 

 from the use of this digger in their free soils, and also for 

 root pruning trees that are to remain in the rows. 



In the sandy loams of New Jersey, a similar tool is used 

 for digging peach trees, which is drawn by a span of 

 heavy horses that are attached to the two separate beams, 

 one being on each side of the trees. This implement is 

 found to be entirely satisfactory in its operations. 



High manuring in the nursery has been objected to by 

 some orchard planters, who say that trees, which have 

 been forced into a too luxuriant growth in their infancy, 

 receive so severe a shock upon being transplanted to the 

 open field, that they never recover. With the neglect 

 which is so commonly accorded to young trees in the orch- 

 ard, it is really wonderful how they ever survive at all, 

 whether they had been stimulated in their culture or not. 

 The large majority of purchasers at the nursery always 

 select those trees which are most vigorous, notwithstand- 

 ing the prejudice against stimulating the trees, and then 

 with mutilated roots, they probably omit cutting back the 

 limbs sufficiently, and when their neglected orchard fails, 

 they complain of the forced trees. The change from the 

 good cultivation of the nursery to the careless culture and 

 even neglect of the farm, is certainly hard for the poor 

 things to bear. Late growth, encouraged by high manur- 

 ing, is injurious. There is a much more serious fault of 

 the nursery than stimulating with manure and high culti- 

 vation, and that is the too common error of crowding the 



