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trophe may be, as it often has been, avoided by placing chaft', straw, or chips 

 around the roots of each tree early in the spring, so as to protect the roots from 

 the influence of the sun during the early warm days above alluded to, and keep 

 the sap down until the frosty season is past. I have seen instances in which 

 the tree has succeeded well without these precautions, as in village door yards, 

 where they have been planted in soil covered with a dressing of clay thrown 

 from the cellar, and spread over the yard in the way of levelling up, and upon 

 which grass had been sown, and a heavy sod formed. It is also remarkable that 

 trees which have been protected through the spring by artificial means, until 

 the roots have struck deep in the soil, are less liable to injury from spring frosts 

 than in the early stages of their growth. These facts seem to suggest the pro- 

 priety of setting peach trees deep in the soil, and that tliey will succeed with 

 greater certainty and less care, though their growth may be more tardy, if the 

 ground is well seeded to grass. 



Apples, Pears, Plums, and Cherries, uniformly succeed well, and come 

 forward much the most rapidly in cultivated ground. One great defect in the 

 horticulture of Dane, and, in fact, of the whole State, is the neglect of the 

 pruning-knife. I. have often been pained, and so has my jack-knife, as I have 

 travelled about the State, to see young orchards,* evidently of several years 

 standing, presenting a dwarfish, scrawny, scrubby appearance, and all for want 

 of seasonable pruning. Some suppose this course to be necessary to avoid inju- 

 ries from the high winds which prevail during the spring and autumn ; but the 

 perfect safety with which the opposite course has been pursued, in some instances, 

 is a sufficient refutation of such a notion. The fii'st object should be to train up 

 a smooth, healthy trunk, of sufiicient height and size to protect the fruit from 

 the cattle, and afford sustenance to a capacious top, which Avill form fast enough 

 when the proper time arrises. 



Apportionment of Labor to Surface. — The large amount of surface 

 usually cultivated by many of our farmers, and the imperfect manner in which 

 it is done, has been the subject of general remark ; and various opinions prevail 

 as to the degree of perfection in cultivation which should be arrived at by western 

 farmers. Many, and amongst them some agricultural journalist of high respect- 

 ability, observing the comparatively small crops, per acre, in extreme cases, of 

 the imperfect cultivation of a lai'ge surface, have run to the opposite extreme, 

 and insisted upon taking the highest examples of English agriculture for imitation 

 amongst ua. Admitting that, in western agriculture, the labor a];)plied is gene- 

 rally spread over too great a surface, it by no means follows that the system of 

 high cultivation adopted in the .crowded countries of Europe, is suited to our 

 condition and circumstances. Where land is abundant and cheap, the desider- 

 atum should be, to obtain the greatest amount of produce from a given amount 



