New YorK AGRICULTURAL IWXPERIMENT STATION. 469 
active organs. It is known, too, that the powers of accommo- 
dation to conditions are great in the roots of all plants. We 
must measure the value of a root system not by its bulk but 
by what it does. 
The “outside row.”—One of the interesting phases of the 
experiment in the Auchter orchard was the behavior of the 
trees in the outside row of the sod-mulch plat. This plat was 
bounded on the east. and west by the tilled fields of the Vick 
seed farm; on the north by the tilled plat of this experiment 
and on the south by a long used cattle lane. An area of sod 
20 feet wide separated the trees in the plat from the adjoining 
territory. As the visitor approached the Auchter orchard the 
most noteworthy thing in the experiment was the compara- 
tively green and luxuriant foliage and the greater quantity and 
larger ‘size of the fruit on the trees on the outside row of the 
sod-mulch plat. There was a marked difference even in the 
halves of the trees lying toward the inside or the outside of the 
plat in favor of the outside. Since 55 of the 118 trees in the 
sod-plat are outside trees, it is not too much to say that the 
showing made by the sod-mulch plat has been greatly bettered 
by reason of greater vigor and productiveness of these outside 
trees. | 
It is a fact that the outside row in an orchard, or in any 
field of cultivated plants, is usually somewhat better than the 
inner rows; the outer rows get more air, sunlight, wind, food and 
moisture. But the great difference in this case, a difference 
scarcely noted in the tilled plat, is abnormal and shows an ab- 
normal environment for the sod-mulch trees. It has been stated 
in a previous paragraph, and Plates XXIX and XXX cited, 
that the roots of the trees in sod at every opportunity passed 
the division line between sod and no-sod either in quest of 
food, moisture and air or to escape proximity to grass roots. 
It is to the fact that the roots of the trees in the outside rows 
have gotten out of the sod that we must attribute the greater 
vigor and productiveness of the outside row in this orchard. 
Table V shows a gain of 1.6 inches in diameter for outside 
row 1 of the sod-mulch plat bordering the lane (see Plate 
