ABOUT FRUITS, FLO WEES AND FARMING. 291 



tree. If your soil is calcareous, full of lime, these applica- 

 tions are not needful. Thoroughly rotted manure, or better 

 yet, black vegetable mold may be dug in liberally, and 

 will supply the soil with nutriment, and the roots will find 

 their way in with great facility. 



5. When a tree is manured, remember that the ends only 

 of the roots take up nourishment, and that the ends of the 

 roots are not found close by the trunk. We often see 

 heaps of manure piled about the trunk, and the ends of the 

 roots are three yards or more distant from it. You might 

 as well put your fodder down at your cattle's hind legs, 

 and wonder that they did not get fat on it. Treat your 

 trees as you do your stock put their food where their 

 mouths are. YOUNG ORCHARDS are better without stimu- 

 lating manure. Let the soil be mellowed, and then give 

 the trees their own time, and if they do not bear quite as 

 soon, they will live longer and be less subject to disease. 



MIRACLES IN FRUITS. 



WHEN a traveller was relating, in Cowper's presence, 

 some prodigious marvels, the poet smiled somewhat incredu- 

 lously. " Well, sir, don't you believe me ? I saw it with 

 my own eyes." " Oh, certainly, I believe it if you saw it, 

 but I would not if I had seen it myself." Even so we feel 

 about the thousand and one physiological fooleries which 

 run the monthly rounds of the papers. 



How on earth do men suppose a fruit to receive its char- 

 acteristic quality? .Is it from the root, trunk, pith, bark, 

 branch, or leaf? One would think that it made no differ- 

 ence which. We have long supposed that the leaf digested 

 the sap, returned it to flu- jia>sa^-s <!' list.riliitin to be 

 employed in the formation of fruit, wood, tissue, etc. Is 

 this the function of the leaf? or have recent investigations 



