1S75.] 
THE CULTURE OF ORCHARD TREES 
255 
as a matter of course, great in tlie affair of Apples, and wlien gentlemen applied 
to the Exeter Nurserymen—who were second to none—for cider Apple-trees, it 
was usual to have some talk over such an important concern, for the cider in 
Devon, like the pig in Ireland, had to pay the rent; and the outcome of this 
conversation was generally an expensive preparation of the soil, by trenching 
it two feet deep, not to mention draining, fencing, and manuring. What concerns 
the present subject, however, is the deep cultivation so essentially necessary to 
success in orchard-planting. The trees, to be safe above ground, must be well 
established below, for the heat of the sun, the moisture of the rain, the action 
of the light, and the ventilating power of the wind, are all useless, unless the 
* trees take deep root, and find the raw materials of nutrition provided beforehand. 
It is true that in some favoured localities, where the staple is not only deep, 
but rich, one has only to stick in an apple-tree any time during the winter, and 
it will grow and flourish ; but these examples mislead many a person who sees 
the one in a hundred succeed, but fails to note the loss of the ninety-and-nine. 
With an annual plant like the oat, or the barley, the four-inch theory is found 
to answer, and the roots of course usually range only to the depth of the tillage; 
but roots of the onion and the wheat have been traced to a depth of 9 ft. or 10 ft. 
Now we know by placing thermometers in the soil, that frost is violent at the 
surface, and mild at 1 ft. down, while at 2 ft. down there is an even temperature 
all the year round. The rainfall has a great deal to do with the temperature 
of the earth, for in summer the warm rain coming in contact with the warmer 
surface on which it falls carries down heat. In like manner, melted snow and cold 
rain in winter cannot help cooling what they come in contact with ; but the 
deeper it goes the warmer it finds the medium, so that whilst the water in the 
4-in. furrow is locked up in the solid form of ice, the water at 2 ft. deep has 
never lost its fluid state. 
The speed with which plants grow when they are rooted deep enough to 
endure strong sun is marvellous. I had some land deeply trenched, and in the 
bottom of the trenches, cabbage-stumps, and other garden waste, as weeds, mown 
grass, <&rc., was placed; the plot was then planted with cauliflower-plants, and 
they withstood a burning sun for six weeks, and by that time the cauliflowers 
were fit for the table. This summer trenching left the ground warm to the 
depth of 2 ft. or 3 ft., and hence the rapid growth of the crop. 
Gardeners know well what summer heat will do with shallow tillage. The 
oabbage tribe will mildew, and the pea crop will show blue-mould instead of 
light green leaves, for it seems a fixed principle that whenever a plant gets out of 
health, and is unable to propagate its species, there is always a destroying agent 
ready to worm it out of the world, like the vulture with the carrion. 
Clay clods have tormented mankind for hundreds of years, for we read in 
Holy Writ of the man breaking the clods. The brickmaker is well up in this 
matter, and casts his clay in winter, and waters it; this is his manner of break¬ 
ing clods, and as long as he can keep it wet, it cannot form a clod. Now the 
