Note 24 — Chapter XIV

The exciting effects of a poor soil, or climate, or of severe usage, on the productive powers of various vegetable species, have been long and often remarked. Flavel describes, in one of his ingenious emblems, illustrative of the influence of affliction on the Christian, an orchard tree, which had been beaten with sticks and stones, till it presented a sorely stunted and mutilated appearance; but which, while the fairer and more vigorous trees around it were rich in only leaves, was laden with fruit,—a direct consequence, it is shown, of the hard treatment to which it had been subjected. I have heard it told in a northern village, as a curious anecdote, that a large pear tree, which during a vigorous existence of nearly fifty years, had borne scarce a single pear, had, when in a state of decay, and for a few years previous to its death, borne immense crops of from two to three bolls each season. And the skilful gardener not unfrequently avails himself of the principle on which both phenomena seem to have occurred,—that exhibited in the beaten and that in the decaying tree,—in rendering his barren plants fruitful. He has recourse to it even when merely desirous of ascertaining the variety of pear or apple which some thriving sapling, slow in bearing, is yet to produce. Selecting some bough which may be conveniently lopped away without destroying the symmetry of the tree, he draws his knife across the bark, and inflicts on it a wound, from which, though death may not ensue for some two or three twelvemonths, it cannot ultimately recover. Next spring the wounded branch is found to bear its bunches of blossoms; the blossoms set into fruit; and while in the other portions of the plant all is vigorous and barren as before, the dying part of it, as if sobered by the near prospect of dissolution, is found fulfilling the proper end of its existence. Soil and climate, too, exert, it has been often remarked, a similar influence. In the united parishes of Kirkmichael and Culicuden, in the immediate neighborhood of Cromarty, much of the soil is cold and poor, and the exposure ungenial; and "in most parts, where hardwood has been planted," says the Rev. Mr. Sage of Resolis, in his "Statistical Account," "it is stinted in its growth, and bark-bound. Comparatively young trees of ash," he shrewdly adds, "are covered with seed,—an almost infallible sign that their natural growth is checked. The leaves, too, fall off about the beginning of September."