306 [Assembly 



Prof. Mapes — Not much. Not enough to do any harm. Spent 

 ley contains a great deal of common salt. 



Chairman — The regular subject of the day is the management 

 of summer fruit. 



The Secretary — said that the most recent doctrine in Europe 

 was that the gathering of fruit was almost as important as the 

 raising it, so great a proportion being ruined by bad handling. 

 That no implement or contrivance was equal to a careful human 

 hand to pick good fruit. 



Prof. Mapes — We have learned to practise one good thing on 

 our fruit trees, that is to scrape the bark perfectly clean, the old 

 notion that the rough old dead bark was of any advantage to 

 trees is utterly exploded. I have stripped the old bark off my 

 Isabella grapes as often as it appears, even once a week if it ap- 

 pears, it is good for them. Trees which have once been used to 

 have clean bark> give up their old habit of producing bad bark. 

 I brush them all over with a mixture of urine, potasli and salt. 



Robert Rennie, of Lodi, New Jersey, has the bark of his plum, 

 peach, apple and pear trees scraped, as if polished. His gardener 

 ' brushed them well with a saturated solution of soda. It does not 

 hurt live plants, does none to the smallest extremities of branches, 

 but cleans all, and they appear as if in a new bark. Rennie's trees 

 gave the best fruit. The cherry tree so treated does not become 

 hide-bound after it. The practice of slicing the bark is a bad 

 one — almost as bad as to slice a man's sliin. I use the same so- 

 lution upon my gooseberry and currant stems, which I keep 

 single instead of letting them bush. I have no mildew on my 

 plants so treated. My neighbors have the mildew on theirs. I 

 have tried it on alternate trees and plants, so as to be able to see 

 the exact worth of it. I put one pound of soda in one gallon of 

 water and let it dissolve to perfect saturation, and I see that 

 some soda is always left undissolved, to assure the saturation. 

 The soda costs three and a half cents a pound — the bleachers' 

 JYb. 1 soda, so called. Sulphate of ammonia costs about four 

 cents a pound here. 



