78 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



which to put its results to the test of practice. There would, I believe, be 

 very little difficulty in finding landlords and fruit growers to aid in a 

 work directed towards their own benefit, by consenting to try some 

 particular form of culture (already shown to be successful on an 

 experimental scale)] on a part of their land, and to allow this trial to be 

 made under the superintendence of the authorities of the experimental 

 station. 



It must not be understood that I am proposing that rigorous 

 experiments, such as are conducted at the experimental station itself, 

 should be instituted throughout the kingdom : that would involve an 

 amount of superintendence and expense which would be altogether 

 prohibitive. I am only suggesting that any one particular method 

 which promises success, should first be tried experimentally under 

 ordinary practical and, therefore, rough conditions, before its adoption 

 is finally advocated. Many trial grounds of this sort throughout the 

 country would, no doubt, call for a considerable amount of organisation 

 on the part of the experimental station ; but the results would, I am 

 confident, amply repay the labour expended, even if we were to set aside 

 the value of the information obtained ; for every landowner or fruit 

 grower who devoted a few acres to such work would feel, and rightly so, 

 that he was taking an active part in experimental research, and a net- 

 work of such plantations throughout the kingdom would do more to 

 develop the spirit of investigation, and the thirst for improvement and 

 progress, than reams of pamphlets and years of preaching. 



The rough sketch which I have given of an ideal experimental station 

 must show how far that particular station with which I am myself 

 connected falls short of the ideal. But in establishing the Woburn 

 Experimental Fruit Farm we never professed to satisfy all the wants of 

 the fruit industry, nor to undertake a work which the State alone could 

 efficiently accomplish. We may occasionally have cause to complain that 

 more is expected from us than the performance of our self-imposed task ; 

 but we shall feel satisfied if our work has helped to bring into prominence 

 the necessity which exists for experimental work on a larger and more 

 comprehensive scale. 



Certain it is that our results have shown that some of even the most 

 elementary and widely accepted views as to horticultural practice require 

 investigation, if not revision ; and in illustration of this I propose to 

 allude briefly to the results which we have obtained in three different 

 matters— the effect of grass on trees, the effect of manure on trees, and 

 the factors which are of importance in planting trees. 



As to the effect of grass, and, to a lesser extent, of weeds, we can only 

 say that no more effective way, short of violent destruction, exists of 

 injuring a newly-planted tree than to grow grass over its roots, and this 

 fact alone is sufficient to account for all the miserable specimens of trees 

 which are to be found throughout the country in ordinary farm orchards. 

 Figs. 1 and 2 illustrate the effect of grass on dwarf and standard apple 

 trees, respectively ; the trees in the grass and in the open soil were 

 precisely similar when planted, and have been treated in a precisely 

 similar manner ever since, except as to the growth of grass. The 

 photographs were taken four years after planting. 



