English Orchards. 



7 



colonies, and for the destructive canker-fungus and other 

 fungi to establish new centres of infection. 



Upon trees maltreated after the fashion described above, 

 badly planted, starved, unpruned, and partly deprived of 

 light and air, mosses and lichens naturally flourish. These, 

 though not parasitic in the scientific meaning of the term, 

 and not actually deriving their nutriment from the apple 

 trees, are encouraged by the unhealthy condition of their 

 hosts, and materially injure them by preventing free respir- 

 ation and transpiration, by obstructing light, and by 

 affording harbours and refuges for all kinds of destructive 

 insects. A really healthy apple tree, in proper soil and 

 surroundings, that has been carefully attended to from the 

 beginning, offers no suitable conditions for the growth ot 

 lichens and mosses, which are certain indications of neglect 

 or of conditions unsuitable for apple culture. 



To the principal causes, to which reference has been 

 made above as having produced, or tended mainly to 

 produce, the lamentable condition of a large number 

 of the English orchards, there must also be added the 

 initial mistake of planting the wrong sorts of apples, 

 as well as not the best sorts. " One sort of apple is as 

 good as another,'' was the opinion of not a few of the 

 originators of the typical orchards in the apple - growing 

 counties. Unfortunately this mistake has been perpetuated 

 both in making new orchards and in filling-up the places of 

 dead trees. Furthermore, as often as not, where a tree fell it 

 was permitted to lie so long as there was a sign of life in the 

 trunk, and many a tree past bearing was left to cum.ber the 

 ground. Even in the most noted cider-yielding districts but 

 few of the growers took special pains to plant the best sorts ot 

 cider-fruit trees, though the soil and surroundings of the land 

 are the most suitable in the whole country for the production 

 of fine cider. And this state of things holds to some extent 

 at the present time. In the less favoured cider-producing 

 localities the apples for this purpose were, and are often even 

 now, regarded as mere refuse, and it was held that any 

 apples would do for making cider. This is, however, being 

 changed in some degree by the insistence of a few practical 



