TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
19 
every day in the week, except Sundays, for months, and starting a new 
growth on those trees. The sap carrying capacity of the trunk up to the buds 
was very much curtailed. This cultivation created an extra power for forc- 
ing the sap into circulation and vigor; it created a force those trees could not 
have had in any other way. The trees gradually began to put on a new head; 
and today, less than nine months after the great freeze, there is in that place 
almost a resurrection from the dead. Eighty per cent of those trees have 
now a full new head on them, ready for a crop another year. In the adjoin- 
ing orchards, where the soil has not been cultivated as much, where there 
have been one or two ploughings and a harrowing, there are sixty per cent of 
dead trees, and the other forty per cent are not perhaps one-fourth as valu- 
able as those in the orchard which has had this cultivation. Now, there was 
no extra plant food or extra anything put on the land except extra cultiva- 
tion, and the result is beyond anything; you can imagine. The effect of cul- 
ture alone has been a source of great astonishment to me and to every one 
who has seen it. A day or two ago I was in two peach orchards on an identi- 
cal piece of land except that a fence marks the dividing line between the two 
properties. It is a broad expanse on the top of a hill. The trees are of the 
same varieties and out of the same nursery. They were planted eight or nine 
years ago. One orchard has had its annual Spring ploughing and one or two 
-harrowings through each season; the other has had its annual Spring plough- 
ing and a thorough harrowing or cultivating and a re-ploughing, with a gang 
plough, through every month from April to August. It has had the most 
thorough, incessant cultivation that could be given within reason, so that 
no weeds or grass were allowed to grow and there was no hardening of the 
soil, but a dust mulch over it all the time. If I had not come away hurriedly 
I would have gone to that field and brought you specimens of Oldmixon 
peaches. In one field there are Oldmixon peaches of from three to four 
inches in diameter, great beautiful specimens; the skin drawn over them 
smooth, tight and clear, creamy in color on the shady side and with a brih 
liant blush on the sunny side. Those peaches are selling at prices of from 
$4.50 to $7.00 per bushel. Prom the adjoining field (where everything is the 
same except as to culture) the peaches range from 1% to 2 inches in diameter, 
have a little brilliance on the sunny side and a greenish white on the shady 
side. They sell at from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. . This is the same soil, the 
difference being that one field was stirred and the other was not. 
I may cite an instance in regard to plums. I visited two fields, not adjoin- 
ing, but within a quarter of a mile of each other, on practically the same tract 
of land. They had been planted with Red June, Burbank and a few other 
varieties. Both had practically the same treatment except that one of the 
fields was ploughed last year, early in the season, and was cultivated fairly 
well, while the other was ploughed early in the Spring and thoroughly cul- 
tivated. I know nothing of the cultivation of those two orchards except this 
year and last year. This year one was ploughed once and allowed to go 
without any other cultivation; the other was ploughed early in the Spring, 
then harrowed crossways and up and down the rows at least twice a week 
throughout the dry season; which furnishes moisture and feeds plant food 
already in the soil. The one has produced a crop of plums of medium size 
but of very inferior quality, which have sold at very moderate prices. The 
other is producing a. crop of plums of large size, great brilliancy of color and 
superior quality. The one has realized an average price of, we will say, $1.00 
and the other has brought $1.50 to $2.50 per bushel. The matter is simply one 
