30 THE AMERICAN APPLE ORCHARD 



grower summed up the matter thus: "Cut out the 

 fillers ? Yes ! Cut off your head !" 



In answer to this objection it should be said that if 

 a man is fairly forewarned of the danger of leaving 

 fillers too long in his orchard, and if he is a man of 

 moderate intelligence, he ought to be able to realize 

 that what he is after is the maximum profit from his 

 orchard ; and if he has any way of knowing when the 

 profit from the fillers begins to be gathered at a great- 

 er expense from the permanent trees, then he should 

 willingly destroy the less for the greater income. A 

 man ought to have no more compunction in cutting 

 out a tree from an orchard than in cutting out a limb 

 at pruning time. In either case he removes a part 

 of his fruit-bearing capital for the sake of getting 

 better returns from the remainder. It is doubtless a 

 fact that the common careless fruit-grower will not 

 remove fillers when he ought to, and this is sufficient 

 reason why the practice of double planting should not 

 be indiscriminately recommended. It is not any rea- 

 son, however, why the intelligent fruit-grower — the 

 man who knows enough really to look out for his own 

 business — should not practice it. 



The second objection is urged against the somewhat 

 common method of filling apple orchards with trees 

 of other species, especially stone fruits, such as 

 peaches, apricots, plums and cherries. The objection 

 is that these different types of fruit require differ- 

 ent methods of culture, and that while striving 

 to do what is best for the peaches or plums, the 

 grower does what is not best for his apples. 

 This objection, of course, rests upon the same 

 ground as the one previously considered ; namely, 



