33S ILLINOIS STATE HORTICUJ/rURAL SOCIETY. 



shellac : First, cut the shellac in alcohol, and then mix together, one- 

 third shellac and two-thirds coal tar, and apply with n paint brush. 

 This is somewhat elastic, will not crack, and will last for years. 



Mr. Minkler — My essay applied to orchards that were damaged or 

 diseased. 



The President — I think the practice of cutting back diseased limbs, 

 as recommended in the essay, and renewing, is correct. 



Judge Weed (of Peoria) — I came to Illinois in 1840, and in 1841 

 sent to Kentucky for apple trees, and planted them on hazel-brush land, 

 in Fulton county; we enriched the soil some, and the trees gradually 

 died out. In later years my experience does not agree with the observa- 

 tions of Mr. Ellsworth. Seventeen years since, I moved to the bluffs of 

 the Illinois river, near Peoria, at which time I procured trees from you, 

 Mr. President, for an orchard. You advised me to take young trees, but 

 I took trees of five or six years old, and the next year planted five hun- 

 dred more, and for a time they did well. I, however, began trimming 

 them, and they began dying. If you begin to trim you must keep trim- 

 ming. I have been converted to the no-pruning plan, by observation and 

 from necessity. I shall plant more trees in the spring, but wont put a 

 knife into them. 



In answer to a question, he said he had cultivated his orchard, but 

 had three acres in blue grass, where the trees were dying the same as the 

 others. He said, I have no trees which have never been pruned, but 

 those pruned least have done best, and are healthiest. There are two or 

 three trees top-grafted with Rhode Island Greening, which have done as 

 •well as any. 



D. C. ScoFiELD (of Elgin) — It seems to me we are not hitting the 

 mark; there is much in location and soils. Orchards about Elgin, on 

 prairie land, trimmed or not trimmed, are failing all alike. When we 

 plant an orchard we should prepare each tree, never leaving a branch 

 which will ever have to be cut off. In cultivating, never plow so as to 

 cut the roots, because the roots need, first, light; secondly, warmth; 

 thirdly, food — all of which they get near the surface. 



A neighbor of mine planted an orchard on the prairie with low- 

 head trees, branching at or near the ground, and when the June grass 

 took possession of it he mulched heavily, killing the grass as far out as 

 the branches extended, and yet some of the trees in this orchard are 

 dying. About the year i860 I planted nine hundred trees, consisting of 

 about twenty varieties, on prairie soil underlaid with gravel, and the 

 orchard has not paid expenses. In 1867 about one hundred Snow-apple 



