Forest and Orchard Unlike. 1385 
ground, wholly omitting the stirring of the soil, for 
this is the method of the forest; and forest lands 
increase in fertility from year to year and the mois- 
ture is held in them as in a sponge. The reagson- 
ing is plausible. There are two ways of testing it,— 
by experience and by reflection. It needs only to 
be suggested that the experiment has been tried, and 
is now trying, upon an extended scale, as a large 
part of the apple orchards of the country testify. 
The chief beneficiaries of the experiment are the 
bugs, mice and fungi, all of which would vote the 
method a suecess. The reasons why the forest 
method is successful are because the trees stand so 
thickly that the earth is protected from the drying 
effect of sun and winds, the forest cover is so ex- 
tensive as to produce a climate of its own, all the 
product is returned to the soil, and there is no 
haste. In every one of these essentials the orchard 
is unlike the forest. Those writers who urge that 
the orchard be planted thick enough to imitate the 
forest condition, should also make it clear how the 
insects and fungi are to be kept at bay, or how 
acceptable fruit. can be obtained upon trees which 
are unpruned and unthinned. The objects to be 
attained in the forest and in the orchard are wholly 
unlike. In one case it is the perpetuation of the 
species, and there results a severe conflict for exist- 
ence, in which more plants die than reach maturity; 
in the other it is the securing of an abnormal pro- 
duct of the plant,—a product which can be kept up 
to its abnormal or artificial development only by 
