The Canadian Horticulturist. 231 



preparation has been made to resist the winter's cold. The tree is sent out 

 in this condition ; it is buried in the earth beneath the frost for the winter ; 

 it absorbs from the soil all the moisture that it can*contain, and if, at the 

 first approach of spring, it is taken out of its winter bed in this state and 

 exposed to the cold piercing winds and keen night frosts it is going to have a 

 severe struggle for life. To subject a young tree to this treatment is like taking 

 a child right from the bath tub, and, whilst the pores of the system are all 

 open, exposing it to -a cold and chilling atmosphere. The child could not 



'stand such treatment without receiving a shock to its system ; no more can 

 the young tree. If it be a pear or an apricot tree it will almost certainly 

 die ; if a plum it may live ; if an apple tree it will most likely live, but it 

 will show evidences of its harsh treatment through life, in what is known as 

 black heart or other kindred defects. 



On the other hand, if the tree be allowed to lie in its winter bed till the 

 season is well advanced and the days become warm and sunny, its fate will 

 be none the less precarious. Before being taken out the buds will have formed 

 and swelled, ready to bursting open ; planted out in the warm sunshine they 

 will immediately burst forth, and in less than two weeks you may have a 

 growth of over an inch in length. But you will not likely get any more 

 growth that season ; for, having exhausted the vitality in the tree itself with 

 no corresponding growth at the root to sustain a continued top growth, the 

 latter must stop and the tree becomes stunted ; and, in spite of every effort 

 on your part to revive its growth it will remain in that condition throughout 

 the season, and the winter will come upon it before it has sufficiently estab- 

 lished itself to withstand the frost and storm, and it will die the following 

 spring. The cause is not far to seek. The tree, as before mentioned, had be- 

 come flushed with sap from absorption; when set out inthewarm sunshine this 

 absorption was stimulated into abnormal growth, and as there was yet no 

 warmth in the ground to promote a growth at the root, the growth at the 

 top must stop when the abnormal vitahty of the trunk is exhausted and 

 there is no preparation made at the root to sustain and continue it. To 



' insure a continued and healthy growth in a tree that growth must first begin 

 at the root. This is nature's method, and any interference at variance with 

 her natural operations is certain to be followed by undesirable results, and 

 any tree that has not established itself by firm root growth during the first 

 season after transplanting, in only an exceptional case will it come safely 

 through the winter to do so the second season. 



Apart, then, from any monetary consideration, fall deliveries are, in my 

 opinion, decidedly against the purchasers' interest. The very high percent- 

 age of mortality, if I may so term it, among pear and plum trees in the 

 County of Perth, I attribute to fall deliveries, and a large percentage of the 

 unhealthiness in both young and older apple orchards, I attribute to the 

 same cause. For example, four years ago a neighboring farmer purchased 



