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



ranch and Waite and others experimenting for, but for you and for me ? 

 For $25 we can get the result of labors that have extended over a hun- 

 dred years and we can put it on our shelves and with a little work, like 

 Elijah did a while ago, we can eat it and get it inside of us, and you 

 will be better farmers a hundredfold, because you have got the result of 

 labors of wise men for many years preceding you. But you go along 

 year after year, just like the Egyptian farmer, with his old plow that he 

 used in Joseph's time. I mean this theoretically— you don't study. 

 Go and get your library, and when this matter confronts you take down 

 your books and delve and dig, and there is not a problem that con- 

 fronts you that you will not solve without writing to the university. 

 You have no right to write to them, because they have put all in 

 print, and you can get it in thousands of bulletins and you can get it in 

 the splendid scientific works that have been given us in the last century. 



Solomon said, "In all your getting, get wisdom." I say to you 

 farmers, "In all your getting, get humus in your soil." (Great 

 applause.) 



THE CHAIRMAN. This matter which has been so splendidly pre- 

 sented by Mr. Mills is now open to discussion. 



MR. JUDD. I would like to ask Mr. Mills one question. Does 

 preserving the leaves — say, for instance, that you have low heads, that 

 you prune your orchard low, so that the leaves do not blow away from 

 under the trees and they lie there and decompose and make a mulch, 

 wouldn't that furnish humus enough ordinarily on good soil without 

 the extra cultivation? 



MR. MILLS. No. It will furnish it in the mountains, where the 

 dense foliage covers all the hillside and all the valley, and where the 

 plant life grows in the rainy season. There you find humus in great 

 quantities that is swept down to the valleys for use. But the leaves of 

 trees in our orchards, no. You would hardly know that they had been 

 there. 



MR. BRINK. I would like to ask Mr. Mills if alfillaria and burr 

 clover are good. 



MR. MILLS. Yes; burr clover is one of the very best. I had 

 twenty-one tons of seed to use this year. It is one of the richest, and 

 it is the natural cover crop, and those of you who have deciduous crops 

 perhaps can let it go to seed, and then it will reseed itself. 



MR. BERWICK. Mr. Mills, I wish to ask you if that thirty-five tons 

 per acre, I think you mentioned, more or less, of vicias, was it — does 

 that include the root system? 



MR. MILLS. The top. I think I said there were twelve thousand 

 pounds in the root system, and I got that by taking ten feet square 

 and digging a trench around it and taking a power sprayer and spray- 



