432 [Assembly 



three years planted and well cultivated, had produced more 

 already than we had reason to believe the Flushing trees had in 

 seven. 



Comparing our treatment with others' neglect — analyzing the 

 soil, and earnestly desirous of coming at truth, we feel confident 

 we are not far from the sly jade. Thrifty growth of peach, pear, 

 and apple, it must be recollected, is invariable wherever ordinary 

 care and cultivation is bestowed, and this fact does not make our 

 problem easier of elucidation. 



To detect the varied causes of this decline of fruiting in thrifty 

 trees, and point out a sovereign remedy — a sort of horticultural 

 panacea — requires a careful chemical analysisof the soil, fhe fruit 

 and the tree, not only, but an intelligent study of the hygrometric 

 and atmospheric conditions attending the subject. To do this 

 patiently, until success waited upon investigation, would require 

 qualities we could not bring to the taskj but some thought and 

 much wasted labor have yielded us little save these thoughts and 

 conclusions. Poor as they may be, the reader obtains them 

 cheaper than the writer. 



The soil of Long Island, varied as it is by every knoll and hol- 

 low, is universally deficient in alumina or clayey material. This, 

 the great absorbent or retainer of the gaseous and liquid elements 

 of vegetation, has never been present to any extent in the soil, 

 while carbonaceous matter, which assumes its office, has gradually 

 been wearing away. Nothing now prevents the immediate pas- 

 sage through the porous soil of the aliment of plants contained in 

 the manures added to it (it must be said wath no stinted hand) as 

 soon as the rains have dissolved their nutritive salts. Potash and 

 soda, that enter so largely into the composition of fruits, and 

 bark, and ligneous fibre, fitting the sap by chemical changes to 

 perform i(s office, and become the juice, or leaf, or twig, or flower, 

 have, by their complete solubility, gone into the lower strata too 

 deep for resuscitation. 



Phosphoric acid has followed downwards, or united with lime 

 to form the strong bones of the beeve — has walked away to the 



