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CHAPTER IX, 
Qf the Means of rendering Trees fruitful—An Abstract of M. Ltjncry't 
Experiments on the Subject—How to Cure the Canker—What is it’s 
Principle—Inference drawn from the Practice recommended. 
The crops arc the chief object in raising fruit trees ; there 
are several expedients in use to make them bear;; there are 
some trees which, from a natural defect, are condemned to a 
perpetual barrenness, and are incapable of yielding any pro¬ 
duce. The unfruitfulness of others, arising fromcauses essen. 
tially different in themselves, makes it impossible to prescribe 
a mode of treatment adapted to all cases. Sometimes they 
have beep made to bear by making a hole to the heart with a; 
borer, and then stopping it up with a peg, by splitting the 
trunk longitudinally, by suppressing some of the roots, &c. 
These are violent, and often destrucive methods, and which 
it would be difficult to refer to any solid and established prin¬ 
ciple. In other respects, as nature troubles itself but little in 
the vegetable, and still less so in the animal kingdom, with 
the secondary object of propagating the species, at the time it 
forms the individual; it will seldom allow these means to be 
had recourse to, before the trees are come to their full growth. 
They must, at least, be suffered to attain a certain degree of 
strength, .before they can be expected to produce plentiful 
crops. Such as bear young, remain slender, exhaust them¬ 
selves, and disable themselves from bearing afterwards. 
From the circumstance of there not being found, in this 
island, any calcareous substance, except that of a few shell 
fish (which is but trifling), it is a long time since, that some 
agriculturists would have concluded, a priori, that lime would 
be our best manure!* 
The fact is no longer problematical. It may be laid down 
* Rliogue, otherwise called the rustic Socrates, lays it down as a prin¬ 
ciple, that the best manures are such as differ most from the nature of the 
soil. I believe that this idea is just. In support of this theory, 1 will state 
a fact, of which our cultivators may avail themselves. 
from 
