Treatment of Nursery Lands. 183 
of plant-food so much as of the availability of that food by 
improving the physical conditions of the soil. The soil must 
be warm, soft, mellow, and the plant must be comfortable. 
The trouble is, not that nursery trees take so much from 
the soil, but that the rotation is too long, the fiber is burned 
out of the soil, and much of the working of the land is 
untimely. 
Certain lands are not readily injured by nursery cultiva- 
tion, and these may grow several continuous crops of trees. 
Now and then the nurseryman can augment the growth 
of his stock by extra attention to tillage (it is assumed that 
he always tills well), and by the addition of some quick 
nitrogen compound, as nitrate of soda; but these are gener- 
ally only temporary correctives. The complete or fundamental 
eorreetive for nursery land is rotation; but the length of 
this rotation may often be shortened, or even entirely re- 
duced, by the judicious intercultural use of stable manures 
and cover crops. 
The conclusion was made that the physical condition of 
the soil is a subject of greater or earlier importance than 
its chemical constitution; that the value of rotation of crops 
lies largely in its ameliorating effect upon the physical con- 
dition, and that nursery lands are no exception in demand- 
ing such rotation. Instead of thinking it strange that trees 
do not readily follow trees, we should rather think it strange 
if they did. Beeause the crop is of several years’ duration, 
it becomes necessary that the alternating cropping should also 
be extended. A system of rotations must be practiced in 
blocks of years, not in single years. But this alternating 
cropping ean be greatly shortened by giving greater attention 
to the addition of fiber to the soil while the nursery stock 
is growing. There are instances in which the alternation 
may be made short, and some in which there need be hardly 
any. Professor Bailey said that he did not look for a gen- 
eral corrective of the depletion of nursery land, therefore, by 
the addition of concentrated or chemical fertilizers, but by 
better management of the lands. 
