136 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
abnormal conditions,—and the struggle for existence 
is reduced to its lowest terms, for it is desired that 
not a single plant be lost. It is simply because it 
is impossible to imitate the forest conditions that 
the forest methods cannot be followed in fruit 
plantations. 
Now that we have come to understand why and 
how it is that the stirring of the soil makes plants 
thrive, the old-time drudgery of tillage becomes the 
most important, the most suggestive, and therefore 
the most difficult to properly understand and perform, 
of all purely farming operations. If we cannot have 
the protection of the forest cover and the forest 
mulch, we must make a muleh for the occasion; 
and if we wait impatiently for results, we must un- 
lock the granaries of the soil more rapidly than 
nature does. We must till for tillage’s sake, and 
not wait to be forced into the operation—as men 
have generally been—by the weeds; yet, whilst we 
have outgrown the need of weeds, we should not 
despise them, but remember them kindly for the 
good which they have done the race. They have 
been an inexorable priesthood, holding us to duty 
whilst we did not know what duty was, and they 
still stand ready to extend their paternal offices. 
Coming, now, to the specific question of the till- 
age of fruit lands, one is struck with the fact that 
all kinds of fruits are commonly more productive 
than the apple; and a moment’s reflection brings 
to mind the fact that the apple alone is the fruit 
which is commonly raised in sod, and which every- 
