98 TEANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



NOTES BY THE SECRET AKY. 



A. C. HAMMOND, WARSAW. 



Mr. President and Fellow-Members: — During the past year or 

 two I have been making some experiments in the orchard, the results 

 of which have been very interesting to me, and may be of sufficient 

 general interest to warrant occupying a few minutes of valuable 

 time. I have an orchard of twenty acres, from which I have for 

 some time been taking an annual crop of hay, but discovered that 

 this double drain was telling on the health of the trees aud quality 

 of the fruit. I therefore, in the spring of '85, broke it up, and in 

 August sowed it with rye. It made an excellent growth, aud by the 

 10th of June was six to seven feet in height and in full bloom. I 

 then put the plows into it, rigging a chain from the end of the 

 doubletree to the plow, in such a way as to drag it down so that the 

 plow would cover it completely. By the middle of August it had so 

 completely rotted that I found no difficulty in sowing a second crop 

 of rye. This grew more rapidly than the first, and by the 1st of 

 June covered the ground with a very heavy growth, when it was 

 again plowed under. After this it was harrowed and dragged at in- 

 tervals of three or four w^eeks during the season. After one or two 

 harro wings it became as finely pulverized as a garden-bed, and so 

 loose that a man in walking over it would sink to his shoe-top. 



Samples of soil were taken from this orchard to the depth of 

 two feet, also from a new meadow a few rods distant, and sent to the 

 University at Champaign, where they were placed in the hands of 

 Mr. T. F. Hunt, who carefully weighed and dried, and again weighed 

 them, which gave the per cent, of water in the different samples. 

 That from the orchard above mentioned was found to contain 24.6 

 per cent, of water, while that from the new meadow near by con- 

 tained only 12.1 per cent. 



Prof. Burrill, in his ad-interim report, will doubtless give us a 

 full account of this interesting and valuable experiment. This orch- 

 ard produced no fruit, but the trees did not suffer in the least from 

 the severe drouth, but made a strong, healthy growth, and promise 

 a good crop next year. 



A year ago I determined to experiment, in the spring, with 

 arsenical poisons ; but the bloom was so light that I hesitated to 

 incur the expense, finally concluded to treat one orchard at least. I 

 therefore ordered a Lewis combination force pump and a quantity of 

 London Purple for the purpose. I then took the heads out of two 

 fifty-gallon barrels, and after boring a large hole in each of them, 

 in which I kept a stick for stirring the mixture, I put them in for 

 floats. T then placed the barrels in a wagon and filled them as 

 nearly full of water as practicable, say about forty gallons in each. 

 A pound of London Purple was then thoroughly mixed in a pail of 



