14 



and the destructive surplus percolates away through, their 

 substance, relieving the asphyxiated roots, and making 

 way for air to enter from the surface. Such ill-judged 

 contradiction of the laws of root-life therefore does not at 

 once kill the trees. But the practice of more or less com- 

 pletely asphyxiating them by drowning several times a, 

 week is by far the commonest cause of the casting of fruit, 

 the dying out of the special young shoots of the year, and 

 the general short space of life allotted to a Cape orchard 

 in other than sandy open ground. 



Means of ensuring the proper mechanical condition 



of the Soil. 



14. We will assume that the cultivator has the conviction 

 firmly established in his mind that success depends upon 

 the degree of completeness with which he can make his 

 soil resemble the mechanical conditions present in a sponge. 

 The foundation of his practice must be the maxim that 

 trees do not grow in earth alone, but in a mixture of earth, 

 air and water. That mixture is soil, if the word is properly 

 understood ; and his first care is to convert the earth of 

 his erven into soil. The difference between the two is 

 something like that which exists between the rudest bar- 

 barism and a high civilization. Little or nothing is 

 possible to the former ; everything is possible to the latter. 



Selection of a Locality. 



15. ISTo great reflection will be needed to show that the 

 proper selection of a locality for an orchard may very mate- 

 rially dimmish the amount of labour and expense requisite 

 to produce the mechanical conditions so much to be desired. 

 Unless absolutely shut up to a definite acreage without a 

 chance of skilled selection, no person would attempt to 

 make an orchard upon a compact clay, or in a place where 

 the level of the ground relatively to other properties 

 rendered it the recipient of surplus water from above. It 

 is essential, even when a man can choose his ground, and 

 receives no seepage from his neighbours, that there be the 

 freest possible outlet for his own drainage, whether of rain 

 water or that which he supplies by irrigation. Yet one 



