28 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



enables the constitution of the tree to resist those wretched chills 

 which I am sure produce just as much harm below as the action 

 of the atmosphere in its intemperate moods works above ground. 

 The properties of the soil and its health-producing assistants 

 must be studied, the varied constituents promoting if not in- 

 suring success must be not too liberally applied ; every appliance 

 must be used in the way that Nature intends for development, 

 for it is only in this way that fruit fibre can be produced in such 

 quantity as every tree requires for the promotion of fair produc- 

 tiveness, for where there is fruit fibre there must be that on which 

 alone it can satisfy its healthy appetite, and this will keep the 

 tree from producing that worthless breast-wood in willow shoots, 

 which none of us I am sure want, unless like myself only such 

 as may be happily placed for cross budding, and thus creating 

 increasing interest in the tree. We do not want more sap than 

 the tree requires, but we want each and every tree well balanced ; 

 what it is enabled to produce, and likewise resist, through the 

 intelligently judicious balancing of the roots with the tree, or if 

 you like it better the tree with the roots. Canker, I am certain, 

 is produced just as much from a lack of food for fruit fibre as 

 from the root piercing downward with a greedy lust for rank 

 feeding on the sour, cold clammy sub-soil, with its viscous matter 

 which is the normal breeding ground of all forms of plant and 

 tree diseases; but not only so, an excess of root-power 

 creates in turn the same evil case above ground, for by creating 

 a superabundance of morbid sap, the atmospheric action of our 

 fickle climate upon every part of the tree, in its flood flow of 

 sap in the early spring, bursts the overstrained, tender ducts, 

 and canker again ensues. All safeguards must be provided, for 

 I am sure without this balancing of the tree above and below 

 ground, the tree will produce not fruitfulness but barrenness, 

 not healthful but bastard growth, not fruit the glory of the show 

 room and being a thing of beauty, the rapturous joy of 

 admiring vision, but cracked and scabbed, at which a pig might 

 l»r pardoned for turning up its nose. We want crispness, brisk- 

 ness, sweetness, and each condition may be gained by enlightened 

 Mending. I do not say perfection has been reached yet. I 

 ,| " ""' '> 11 f;ir 11 1 liave gone, in the intensely interesting 

 ;>nd the intelligent widening of my knowledge in the ever 

 varying object lessons nature so generously offers, that I 



