TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 173 



tree, in so far as this condition is predominant. The wood thus formed 

 and located will, it is true, eventually become the home of fruit, but at 

 the immediate expense of the regular fruiting limbs and the injury of 

 the quantity and quality of both their fruit and their provision of new 

 fruit twigs. These vigorous upstarts, when becoming productive, will 

 bear fruit of a coarseness commensurate with their own rank growth. 

 Besides advancing the tree top to an inconvenient height, they interfere 

 seriously with the true fruit limbs — and hold their own fruit exposed to 

 weather injury. 



Checking the upward flow of sap by restricting wood growth, so far 

 as possible, to outward and declining limbs, tends to multiplication of 

 fruits and to fineness of grain and richness of flavor, because all rank 

 growth of branch or product is rare in pendent limbs. 



When each remaining limb, selected according to its worth, has been 

 so pruned that its branches have clear action, comparable to the human 

 arm with its hand and outstretched fingers, executive of the body, as 

 the limbs and branches are of the body of the tree, and has such 

 exposure as to give its foliage free access to its air food and to the light by 

 which it may use it, then the fruits borne among its leaves, and the 

 fruit twigs and spurs there formed for the succeeding crop, having the 

 best of facilities and the unwasted vigor of life, will be prime in 

 quality and abundant in quantity. 



The method of pruning to produce such excellent results, just out- 

 lined in its main features to consist of forming the tree of radiating 

 limbs only, each given space for activity, depends, as has been said, 

 upon laws of plant life. 



The grower naturally gives his thought and care chiefly to his soil, 

 because it is the tree's visible and tangible support and affords a well- 

 known food supply — forgetful of the truth that the largest portion of 

 the solid matter of his tree and fruit comes from the atmosphere 

 surrounding it. 



No soil, however rich, can support to full-headed grain, a multitude 

 of stalks of wheat or corn; they may grow as spindling weaklings to 

 some height, but they can scarcely reproduce the seed that gave them 

 life. Doubtless the roots lack space in the ground, but the blades, also, 

 are too numerous for each to benefit by the air conditions. 



As a boy, I used to see masses of wood piled closely in a rounded 

 heap, then sodded over carefully to exclude the air, save by slight open- 

 ings around the base. Then it was burned slowly, day and night, for 

 many days. In due time the fire was extinguished by closure of drafts, 

 and the cover of sod removed. There stood the pile, to my surprise 

 almost as large as before it was burned, all black charcoal, nearly pure 

 carbon. 



This it is that is derived wholly from the air as the plant is growing. 



