the nursery should be of the same sort as where they are to be finally planted out, and it should be well enriched and worked. deep, and the nursery kept clean and free from weeds. Planting out is an important part of the work, and should never be left to boys and careless help. When I plant I take up a few trees carefully at a time, and see that they are properly set before more are taken up. It is very rare for me to lose one. Early spring is the best time for transplanting. Mulching is highly useful, for which purpose straw, swale hay or even brakes or potato tops will answer. The land intended for the orchard should be well prepared before planting by deep plowing, thorough pulverization of the soil, and a liberal addition of manures-planting crops for a year or two which require the use of the hoe. If any manure is applied when the trees are planted it should be well composed beforehand with a good share of muck. After culture must not be neglected. When the trees are of suitable size grafting should be done in the limbs. These should be from half an inch to an inch in diameter when the scions are inserted; three or four healthy limbs properly situated will form sufficient top; this should be open and well balanced. Pruning is best done in summer and fall, and if properly attended to when the trees are young, there will not often be need of removing large limbs afterwards.

After several years of cultivation the land may be seeded down to grass, but without grain; keep up fertility and a healthy growth by top dressing with compost and leached ashes. The less an orchard is plowed after the trees are well under way and in productive bearing, the better. Pigs serve a good purpose in orchards, keeping the land manured and eating all the wormy fruit. If the orchard is mowed, any lack of vigor in the trees should be promptly met by the application of manure.

Great loss is incurred by careless picking and handling; pick and handle with great care; pack close in clean barrels. Early sorts should be gathered before they soften, and should reach the dealer or consumer a little before they are in eating condition. It is found more profitable to sort carefully and make two grades. Those which are all fair and without fault will bring a much better price, and the second class will sell for nearly or quite as much as if not sorted at all.

In everything pertaining to the orchard and the care and treatment of trees and of fruit, whatever is worth being done at all is worth being done faithfully and well.

Considerable has been said

MR. R. DUNHAM of Woodstock. about selecting trees that are well balanced. The question arises, how shall such trees be produced? I think it highly necessary, as we generally put the seed into the ground thick, that the trees should be transplanted when one or two years of age, and that is the time to prepare the tree so that it shall grow well balanced. Caution should be used in preparing the roots. If the tree has a tap-root that should be shortened and the top should be so trimmed as to be well balanced. Then the tree will grow into regular shape and be well balanced. Then if I were to transplant that tree before budding or grafting, I would take it up early in the fall, carry it to a dry piece of land and bury it, root and branch in the soil. Then early in the spring, I would take it up and transplant it. I have found this to be the most successful way of removing a tree from the nursery to the orchard. When taken out in the spring the sap seems to run freely into every part of the tree, and every bud ready to start. Trees thus treated seem to grow more vigorously than by any other method.

Muck has been spoken of as a bad soil to plant apples on. I once planted out a lot of nursery trees upon a piece of mucky land on which loam and gravel had been carted and they did well. It has also been said that the roots of trees should not be dried. I once had a bundle of trees which had been delayed until they were quite dry, roots and tops both. I soaked them in a pond two days and then planted them and saved the whole. Some were left and became good sized bearing trees, and bear well. They bear profusely in some years.

MR. GOLD. Does water ever stand about your trees which are planted on muck?

MR. DUNHAM. In the spring when the snow goes off, the water will come into my orchard perhaps a foot or more deep, but I have no doubt that a very coarse gravel underlies this muck-bed, for in a week's time the water all disappears. There is no water during the whole summer season, so that I think it is well underdrained, though I did not expend any labor to drain it.

QUESTION. to plant?

Do you consider New York trees safe and desirable

MR. DUNHAM. I do not care much where a tree grows. If a tree could be well taken up in New York nursery and brought safely to Maine (though I would not recommend it to be done, because I believe we ought to raise our own trees) I should as

lief have it as a tree from Norway or Rumford or Dixfield. New York trees have succeeded with me. I know there has been great complaint with regard to them. The great difficulty with New York trees is that men do not take care enough of them. Many of them are bruised when they come and many have frozen roots and frequently after planting they are not cultivated nor enriched properly. If we take a tree from rich soil and put it into poor soil without giving it proper care we ought not to expect it to grow.

QUESTION. Will New York trees bear as well as ours when they get to bearing?

MR. DUNHAM. I should say that no grafted tree will bear equal to a natural tree. So far as my experience goes, I think that natural fruit trees that come from the native seed are likely to produce more fruit than a grafted tree. The New York trees with me bear as well as any other grafted fruit. The Northern Spy bears profusely on my ground, though it was a good while coming to maturity.

MR. PIERCE. I have travelled through Maine considerably and I have noticed that the best orchards generally slope to the southeast. In Norway, Livermore and all through this region, that cant is the best. In North Norway there are orchards sixty years old that have done well; the southwest wind does not strike them. With us the southwest winds often kill orchards, if they blow two days. I have often noticed that orchards sheltered by pine trees on a side hill with a southwest cant will be killed. You will notice this fact, also, that the northeast side of a tree will bear apples when the northwest side will not have any fruit.

According to my experience, trees from New York will not do well in Maine; we should do well to bud them. You cannot get apples from a tree put into a little piece of root, however handsome they may look when they are brought to you.

SEC. GOODALE. In regard to the proper distance between trees in an orchard much depends on the variety. With strong growing sorts on good soils forty feet is none too much. But it should be borne in mind that some parts of Maine are in the northern limit of successful apple culture and that trees of some of the kinds which succeed in the northern part of the State do not grow nearly so large as the Baldwin, and others which succeed in. this vicinity, for instance the Duchess of Oldenburg the most profitable apple in Aroostook county and the Fameuse, which is

also sufficiently hardy to succeed there, do not require so great distance. Twenty-five to thirty feet for the Duchess gives as ample room for development as forty to fifty feet for a Baldwin in Oxford County.

With regard to aspect, I would recommend to one planting a new orchard to study carefully the facts presented by the orchards in his vicinity; just as I would recommend the same careful observation in relation to the varieties to be selected. Let him follow the indications thus found, both as to aspect and in relation to the kinds which have been proved by experience under similar conditions to be hardy and profitable. One aspect may be found better in one locality and another in another, and not very far off either. So with varieties. In some parts of Kennebec county the Roxbury Russet is the most profitable variety to cultivate by far, and the Baldwin is hardly worth growing. A very few miles distant the reverse will be found to be the case.

In my report for 1863 are some remarks on root-grafted trees, such as are known in common parlance as "New York trees," by no means recommending them for planting in Maine. I am happy to say that the general character of the nursery grown apple trees brought from New York into Maine has considerably improved since those remarks were written. A large proportion of them are grown on longer pieces of root and are of kinds better suited to our soil and climate; and with suitable care a tolerable proportion of them may eventually become productive trees. The mere fact that a tree is root-grafted need not necessarily condemn it. If it be grafted at the crown-i. e., on the upper part of a vigorous seedling root, (a whole root) and if it be grafted with a sort adapted to our soil and climate, and in addition to this, if it be of a kind adapted to this method of propagation, it may do well if brought hither uninjured, with good treatment afterwards, notwithstanding it be nursery grown in a soil and climate foreign to ours. It was the utter neglect of these necessary conditions which rendered the trees spoken of in that report worse than worthless. At the same time, nothing has transpired to occasion any change of view in regard to the expediency of growing our trees in Maine in preference to buying from abroad. The true policy for us is to grow them at home. In fact the only successful method with some of our leading sorts, such as the Baldwin, Roxbury Russet and others (with very rare exceptions) is to plant out healthy seedlings of home growth, and when of proper size

grafting the desired sorts into the limbs. There are a few favored localities where nursery grafted trees even of Baldwin have succeeded in Maine, but so very rare as to be wholly exceptional. There are other kinds such as Red Astrachan, Northern Spy and a few others which succeed just as well when grafted or budded near the ground in the nursery as when grafted into limbs.

One of the most serious drawbacks to successful orcharding is the ravages of the Apple Worm or Codling moth, and it is a growing evil, and likely to increase until efforts are earnestly and persistently and extensively made to check it. Mr. Perley has alluded to the winding of hay or straw bands around the tree, in which the worm may find a lodgment, the bands to be afterwards taken off and burnt. These bands have undoubtedly served a good purpose, but not every one can so easily make and apply such bands as they can bands made of strips of cloth, and these are equally effectual, and need not be destroyed when removed for the destruction of the worms, but can be repeatedly used, and they are applied and fastened with more ease. They may be two or three inches wide, of stout cloth or canvass, long enough to encircle the tree or to wind spirally several times about it, and may be secured by a tack or two at each end. They should be applied the latter part of June, and should be removed, and the insects destroyed at least once a fortnight so long as any apples remain on the trees.

At the session of the American Pomological Society held at Richmond, Va., last September, there was shown an apple worm trap by Thomas Weir of Lacon, Illinois, which attracted much attention, and was received with great favor on account of its cheapness, simplicity, ease of application, and the evidence of effectiveness which accompanied it. It was examined by a committee consisting of Charles Downing, Esq., Mr. Quinn and other eminent horticulturists, and pronounced highly promising.

It is made of three pieces of thin board, 12 to 20 inches in length, and about 3 inches wide, varying a little in width, and fastened together with a screw in the middle by which the trap is secured to the tree. The narrowest board is placed next the tree and the widest outside. The boards are cut (semi-circularly) on each side of the screw, to facilitate turning them apart for the destruction of the insects. A few short pieces of straw are placed between the boards, which serve both to guide the worm and to keep the boards slightly apart. A knowledge of the habits of the