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when it becomes a serious operation to the tree to have its branches lopped in that manner.

With regard to the time of pruning, there has been some disagreement among pomologists, but it is pretty well settled that the mild days of winter will do very well for pruning, and that it is better to do it at that time. If we delay it until June, the pressing operations of the farm always exclude careful pruning. Prune with a clean, smooth cut, just close enough so that the wound may heal over-not too close, so as to leave a large scar upon the branches, as is sometimes done. Do not leave a stump sticking out to rot off, because when it is gone, you will find a hole rotted into the tree, just as surely as you do so. All "water sprouts," as they are called, suckers growing from the base of the tree, or growing from the limbs, should be carefully taken off at least once a year. Secure a well-balanced head. Some varieties have such a disposition to grow one-sided, that after planting properly, you must look after them carefully. You can do much by early pruning towards keeping a well-balanced head, sufficiently open to enable you to gather the fruit comfortably, and to allow a free circulation of air, that you may have perfect fruit. These are the objects to be secured in pruning.

Gathering the fruit. If for winter use, or for market, too much pains cannot be taken here. The practice of shaking upon the ground and gathering up the bruised, crushed and battered fruit, is simply a barbarous custom. The most delicate varieties of autumn fruit can be kept, if carefully gathered, even into midwinter. I have the Fameuse, or Snow Apple-Pomme de niege— some of you know it, undoubtedly--a famous apple, good in October. I have it now in my cellar. It has lost some of its flavor, to be sure, because it has been kept past its season, but by careful gathering it will keep, and so will other varieties keep. The Fameuse suffers more from careless gathering than almost any other variety. It is so tender and delicate when taken from the tree, that it readily bruises, which injures its quality very much. My practice is to gather in baskets and put directly into barrels in the field, transport them carefully to some out-building, where I can keep them cool and moderately ventilated, until it is time to put them in the cellar, and then remove them to the cellar. If they are to be sent to market, you know the rules of packing. The barrel must be full-it must be a little more than full, so that the head will press firmly upon the fruit, that there may be no

jolting in transportation to market, and that they may arrive in the same order as they left your farm. But I refer especially to the preservation of fruit for your own use as farmers. You can just as well have your fruit keep if you will gather it carefully from the trees. You save the labor of sorting during the winter, by putting the picked fruit of one variety by itself in a barrel at the time you take it from the trees; it is all alike, fit for use at one time, and there will be little if any loss from decay.

With regard to the diseases and insects to which our fruit trees, especially apples, are exposed. The cold, wet soil, in which too many orchards have been planted is frequently the cause of the curling of the leaf and the decay of the outer branches, so that the tree very soon becomes, so far as the extreme branches are concerned, dead; and then it will be filled up with suckers and water shoots, that produce nothing. A healthy growth that will thoroughly mature the wood before winter is the great secret of hardiness in fruit trees. If by your culture-if by your system of manuring, you can insure that, you will insure your trees against winter killing in any form, and your culture should look towards that. Any system of culture which causes a vigorous growth towards autumn, is bad for the trees. Well ripened wood-and this is especially necessary in the pear-is of the utmost importance to the life and health of the tree.

With regard to enemies, we have the canker worm, we have the nesting caterpillar, we have the apple worm that bores into the apples, and last of all we have the apple maggot, which is perhaps unknown here, but which is a very serious drawback to the culture of the apple.

QUESTION. Let me inquire if the apple maggot attacks the apple upon the tree, or after it is picked?

MR. GOLD. I have had no great experience with the apple maggot. I think its devastations are often not shown until after the apples are gathered, although they are found in the apples when lying upon the ground under the tree.

MR. J. S. GOULD. The eggs are always inserted when they are upon the tree.

MR. GOLD. It is a new pest. I do not know how far the canker worm is known in this State.

MR. PERLEY. Not at all.

MR. GOLD. A very happy exemption. You probably have the apple borer which works at the root. Farmers look at their trees

a few inches above the surface, and find some holes there. That is the first warning noticed, and they make an examination; they find nothing but a hole. It is where the borer came out. The borer is an insect that attacks the tree just at the surface of the ground. Two crops of eggs are laid, and they hatch at different seasons—a small white worm proceeds to bore his way into and beneath the bark, and into the wood, working onward and upward, and in the course of a year or two, makes its exit some inches from the surface of the ground; and when you see that little round hole, about the size of a goose-quill, you may know that he has gone. The only remedy, after he has once entered the tree, is to punch him out with a wire or cut him out with a knife or gouge, and it is not so damaging to the tree as you might expect The wound heals up readily. While the borer is at work, it is a growing sore, continually sapping the vitality of the tree; cut it out and it becomes a healthy wound, which will heal over and the tree will recover. But "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" here. Various applications are made to the tree to render it distasteful to the borer, and prevent the female from laying her eggs. Almost anything that will not injure the tree and that is noxious to insect tastes, will accomplish this. Washing with any one of the various offensive and tenacious liquids, which will hold on during the month of June, is very sure to accomplish it. Whale oil soap, and carbolic acid soap, have been recommended and used with success. The application of gas-tar in autumn has been recommended, and is claimed to be safe. I never have tried it. Whale oil soap, or anything of that sort, is very distasteful to insects, and the action of the mild alkali upon the bark is favorable to the growth of the tree. Nothing safer can be recommended than a wash of that kind.

Nothwithstanding all these insects that are ready to attack our trees, we have no reason to be discouraged. I think the success of fruit culture has been quite as good as we ought to expect, considering how much this department has been neglected. If we raise a crop of corn, we expect to manure it; if we raise a crop of apples, ought we not to provide food for the tree? Whether this is to be done by mulching the surface, so as to favor the decay of vegetable matter already in the soil, or by the direct application of manures to the tree, every one must decide for himself, as his own locality and circumstances may seem to demand; but it is evident to every one, that we ought not to expect to get

something out of nothing; and is it not very much like this to plant an orchard and leave it neglected upon the barren hillside, and then complain because we get no fruit?

I will not take up your time with more extended remarks, as I did not design to exhaust the subject, but merely to present some general points in fruit culture.

MR. HERSEY. How far apart would you plant trees in an orchard?

MR. GOLD. I should give them considerable room-30 or 40 feet, at least-rather than the close planting I have sometimes seen practiced. Close planting does very well when the trees are young, but at full maturity, it is a great damage. The necessity that I have seen brought upon some orchardists of cutting down half of their trees, fifteen or twenty years after planting, has not seemed to be beneficial even to the trees that were left.

MR. LUCAS. How many would you ordinarily set upon an acre of ground?

MR. GOLD. About forty apple trees.

MR. LUCAS. A good orchard man in our county, Mr.

says seventy here in the State of Maine.

MR. GOLD. Mr. Stephen Hoyt of New Canaan, Conn., one of our best nurserymen, has many acres planted in orchards. He planted this large number to the acre, and he is now-the trees having been planted some fifteen or twenty years-obliged to cut down one-half of them. It is a very disagreeable necessity to be forced upon any one, and it does not seem to favor the trees that are left. I was through his orchards last fall, and he told me he had planted too thick.

MR. LUCAS. I have an acre and a half that has two hundred trees. The first of them were set out perhaps forty years since, and about half of them are alive; nearly half of them died in 1856 and 1857. Those trees were set out a rod apart. The proper distance is an important consideration.

MR. GOLD. Some seasons there seems to be an advantage de. rived from this natural shelter; other seasons it seems to operate disadvantageously; but I prefer to look forward to the full de velopment of the tree, rather than to its partial development for the first few years.

HON. S. F. PERLEY of Naples. I have been exceedingly interested in the remarks of our friend from Connecticut in regard to the manner of treating apple trees, in the first place, because

I know him to be good authority, and secondly, because I am much interested in that subject myself. We are always interested about that in which our profits lie. Mr. GOLD has endeavored to give us general principles rather than specific instructions. Very good; now if you will allow me a short time, I will confine myself more particularly to details. There is but very little new to be said. Nearly all that I propose to say may be found in many fruit books that have been published, but sometimes when we hear the experience of any one from living lips, it has more influence upon us, and does us more good than to read it in a book. I will speak more particularly of apples, because this, in my judgment, is an apple region. Pears need not be excluded; but the lands of Oxford, Franklin, northern Kennebec, and northern Cumberland, where I am best acquainted, are peculiarly adapted to the growth of apples. We often make a mistake in undertaking to raise that upon our land which the ground was never designed to produce. We may make that same mistake in planting orchards. The best judgment should be exercised in selecting the site. I will speak of Oxford county, because we are now upon its soil. It will be observed by all those acquainted with these ridges, that they grad ually slope to the north and usually break down rather abruptly to the south.

Professor Agassiz gives us the reason why we find the soil on the northern trend of these hills deeper. Generally in selecting a site for an orchard in Oxford county, I would select a northern trend, first, because it has a better exposure, and next, because we get a greater depth of soil. The soil is almost invariably deeper upon the northern than upon the southern side, and in my observation, the best orchards are to be found upon the northern side. In regard to the adaptation of the soil to apple orchards, my observation is this: that the poorest soils that you can plant an orchard upon (trees will grow almost anywhere,) are sand, stiff clay and muck. The best soil upon which you can plant an orchard with a prospect of success is limestone or granite soil, where the granite is largely composed of feldspar.

Professor Emmons tells us that in one hundred parts of the ash of apple wood, (sap wood,) there are sixteen parts potash, eighteen parts lime, and seventeen parts phosphate of lime. In feldspar and granite we find a considerable per centage of potash; in limestone soils we certainly find lime. Now, if we would plant our apple trees in the right soil, we should take those which nature

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