STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 149 



the excrements of our animals can be turned. If the urine does 

 not supply enough liquid to dissolve the solid manure, water can 

 be poured in as caught from the roof of the barns, or pumped from 

 the wells. To prevent the escape of the volatile matters, hand- 

 fuls of gypsum and other fixing minerals can now and then be 

 thrown on the surface of the decomposing mass. Then the rich 

 liquid can be pumped out and distributed just at the times the 

 growing plant demands the fertilizers. This mode has been pur- 

 sued with excellent results by Mr. Mechi, in England, and by 

 farmers in New Jersey. The special advantages are apparent. 

 Besides furnishing the manures at the proper time, thej' are in a 

 condition to be promptly absorbed by the roots and the leaves of 

 the plants, as they are dissolved in 'w'ater, and each plant can 

 select from the liquid the ingredients it most needs. 



A single fact ought to convince us that this is a superior mode. 

 Our vegetation can draw from the atmosphere all the principal 

 substances which it requires for its growth, except nitrogen and 

 phosphorus and their compounds. These must be furnished from 

 the soil, or from the liquids which come in contact with the roots. 

 While the nitrogen or its compounds, ammonia and nitric acid, 

 are not found in great abundance in our crops, yet they are very 

 essential to their growth ; and phosphoric acid constitutes from 

 seven to forty-nine per cent, of our most common field and garden 

 products. These constituents are found in the urine of animals, 

 and are absorbed and retained in the liquids and the minerals put 

 into the tanks at the barns." 



Deep Planting. — One of the most common mistakes practiced by 

 the novice in fruit culture is that of deep planting. This error 

 applies to all fruit trees alike, pear, apple, peach, plum, cherry, as 

 well as to ornamental trees and shrubbery, to all of which it is 

 equally fatal. The trees have barely lived, not thriven after such 

 a plain violation of the laws of vegetable life and growth. 



*" Now the operation of planting may be very properly classed 

 into three distinct systems : First, planting justly consists in 

 placing the tree rather shallower than it stood before its removal. 

 This is one of the distinctive features of an intelligent planter. 

 Secondly, I should call the setting operation, which might properly 

 be entitled the post-hole process, for even in the lamented Down- 

 ing's time, that close observer of nature wrote, ' Many persons 



* President Hooper's Annual Address, Pa. Fruit Growers' Society, pp. 28 and 29. 



