PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. ' 187 



surface and the feeding roots, in the early spring when the tree is pre- 

 paring* for the greatest burden it has to bear in its life, the budding and 

 the setting of the crop, depend upon the bacteria, and the bacteria can 

 not be without warmth, and the warm soil will give more fertilizer to 

 the tree, more crop to the tree, because it is warm, than the soil that was 

 cold. 



Again, lots of humus in your soil will keep your soil from washing. 

 I forget the gentleman who read a paper a couple of days ago and who 

 said the surface of his soil, because of great rains, was washed off and 

 carried down. It is true. In some orchards you will see the soil all per- 

 colating down and running off into the roads and the gutters. In 

 another tract you will find the very opposite. Why? There was no 

 humus in one. there was lots in the other. The one was a humus soil, 

 the other was not a humus soil. Now, these conditions are brought 

 about by humus, this humus which is the life of the soil. By washing 

 it out you get a sterile soil. 



We heard here the other day from Mr. Crandall about the very best 

 citizens that America has, the descendants of the men who years ago 

 crossed the Allegheny Mountains to settle the lands that were west of 

 them, and they moved from Ohio to Nebraska and Iowa, they have gone 

 to Dakota and Minnesota, they have gone to Illinois ; but to-day the soils 

 that used to give them thirty and forty bushels of grain are giving them 

 eight and ten: they are exhausted. And what are they doing: They 

 are going up into the great northern country which Mr. Crandall has 

 traveled over and which I walked over in 1881 for two thousand miles— 

 a land richer by far than anything under the sun, richer than the 

 black lands of Eussia, land that will give them from .forty to sixty 

 bushels of grain to the acre. They exhausted the soils that they took 

 years ago and they go off to take new soil. What was their duty to 

 posterity ? Their duty was to keep alive the soil, to keep fertile the 

 soil, and by giving it hunms that is what they would have done. 



You know that we have about ninety millions of people in this 

 country to-day ; that we will have one hundred and twenty-five millions 

 of people in thirteen years, according to a report of the Census Bureau; 

 that we will have two hundred millions of people in 1950, and three 

 hundred and twenty-five millions of people in 1990; and these three 

 hundred and twenty-five millions of people must live off of the soil that 

 to-day is keeping measurably prosperous ninety millions of people. We 

 are not the owners of this soil ; the Almighty did not give it to us as our 

 own. We have the title deeds to-day, but to-morrow we are dead and 

 gone from the land to which no one ever returneth, and it goes to 

 another, and it is your duty and mine so to conduct ourselves in the 

 management of these soils that we will leave them richer than we got 

 them. Not that it will cost us money to do it. Be assured that the 



