Eminent Authorities on the 



Mapes Systemz«^Fmit Culture. 



Mr. Charles V. Mapes was the first to lay stress upon the importance in 

 fruit culture of using manures especially adapted to promoting fruit power, in 

 contradistinction to wood growth. He insisted that the essential elements of 

 plant food should be supplied not only in varied forms, so as to insure the 

 greatest certainty of action possible in meeting the demands of the trees or 

 vines at their successive stages of growth and ever-changing conditions, but 

 also that there should be present those forms that have been found by practi- 

 cal experience and scientific research to be the best adapted for promoting the 

 highest quality of fruit as well as quantity. He claimed that merely to make 

 a fruit tree or grape vine grow vigorously, was a very small part of real suc- 

 cess; that rapid wood growth was often made at the expense of both quantity 

 and quality of fruit, together with impaired stamina and disease-resisting 

 strength of the trees and vines, thereby causing them to fall an easy prey to 

 attacks and strains put upon them by adverse seasons, fungi, insects, etc. 

 this injudicious forcing manuring he claimed to be especially injurious to the 

 orange and grape (for vine or market), and but little less so to apples, peaches, 

 pears, strawberries, etc. — E. S. Carman, in Ru/ral New Yorker. 



Dr. F. M. Hexamer, President of the Farmers' Club of the American 

 Institute, New York, and the well-known authority on Fruits and Potatoes, 

 writes in the American Garden. 



The widely varying effects of different fertilizers upon the quality of 

 Grapes, Strawberries and various tree fruits as well as upon the vigor and 

 health of the plants and trees, are well known to careful observers. The 

 Orange, however, has only so recently come under extensive cultivation in 

 our country, that comparatively little study has been given to its special 

 needs. Mr. Charles V. Mapes, who has probably given more attention to this 

 subject than any other chemist or fruit grower, has for some time collected 

 and sifted all the information about the Orange culture obtainable, and this, 

 together with the results of his own experiments and conclusions, is embodied 

 in his interesting pamphlet. It would be difficult to crowd more solid practi- 

 cal information into an equal number of pages, although the author modestly 

 states in his introductory remarks that they are intended more to invite 

 further investigation and discussion than to afford a definite solution of the 

 question. 



Carefully compounded manures, like the Mapes, which contain large pro- 

 portions of potash and phosphoric acid, and with these the nitrogenous 

 portions in the best forms for the use of plants, make Fruit Trees and Fruit 

 Vines that are strong and well developed in all their parts, just as proper food 

 builds a man or horse as he should be. Mr. Mapes emphasizes the fact that 

 rapid growth does not mean fruiting power ; that the forcing manurea 

 weaken rather than strengthen the productive faculties of fruit plants, and 

 also impair their strength to resist disease, inserts and bad iveather — 

 E. H. LiHEY, in the American Garden. 



