These reasonings do not include plants which, in their original nature, have a system of large sap-vessels, etc., and which naturally are rapid growers, but respects only plants which have been forced to this condition by circumstances.
Has this condition of the vegetable substance nothing to do with the health of a tree? Does it not very much determine its liability to disease?—its excitability? Where are trees liable to diseases of the circulation? In England, in New England, where, by climate and soil, growth is slow?—or in the Western and Middle States, where, by climate, by soil, and by vicious treatment, the growth is excessive? This leads me to review the methods employed in rearing fruit-trees.
The nursery business is a commercial business, and aims at _profit_. It is the interest of nurserymen to sell largely, and to bring their trees into market in the shortest possible time from the planting of the seed and the setting of the bud, to the sale of the tree. But independently of this, few nurserymen know, accurately, the nature of the plants which they cultivate, and still less the habits of each variety. Why should they, when learned pomologists are content to know as little as they? The trees are highly cultivated and closely side-pruned. The _vigor_ of a tree, _i. e._ the rapidity with which it will grow, determines its favor. Sorts which take time, and require a longer treatment, are regarded with disfavor. Everything is sacrificed to rapid growth and early maturity.
Next, and proceeding in the same evil direction, comes the orchard cultivation. From what quarter have we, mostly, derived our opinions and practices in fruit cultivation? From French, English, and New England writers. But is the system which they pursue fit for us? There is an opposite extreme to high cultivation; there are evils besetting low-cultivation. In cold, wet, stiff, barren soils, and in a cool, or humid, or cloudy atmosphere, trees require stimulants. The soil needs drying, warming, manuring; and the tree requires pruning. But such a system is ruinous, where the soil is full of fiery activity, bursting out with an irrepressible fertility and a superabundant vegetation; where the long summer days are intensely brilliant, and the _air_ warm enough to ripen fruit even in the densest shade of an unpruned tree.