ORCHARDS AND FRUIT CULTURE. 73 



any other stock ; they manure it more evenly, they enrich it in a 

 peculiar way. There is something- in the old saying, that " sheep 

 leave golden tracks." I know they manure a piece of ground 

 better than any other stock. Allow me again to cite my own 

 experience here. I have an orchard of a little over four acres, 

 one which my father had plowed and planted, and mowed and 

 hoed, as Mr. Gold treated one upon his farm. When I took the 

 farm, the orchard was run out, and for ten years I hardly got ten 

 dollars profit out of it. I undertook to cultivate it. In plowing, 

 the roots would stick up all about. It was terribly discouraging. 

 I manured it, but still the apples did not come. Going into that 

 field one day when it was in potatoes, I made up my mind I would 

 never put the plow into that orchard again, live as long as I might, 

 and I left the potatoes in the hills. I never again put the plow in, 

 but left it to grow up to grass, if it would ; I did not care much 

 whether it would or not. Little or nothing has been done to it 

 since, except to pasture sheep. I turned in half a dozen at first, 

 and in four or five years increased them to twenty or twenty-five. 

 Now for the result. The sheep were turned on in 1856 ; no account 

 was taken until I860. Then I got 620 bushels of apples. There 

 arc 260 trees in the orchard. In eleven years, from 1860 to 1871, 

 I harvested 6,417 bushels from those acres, which brought me 

 $5,046.66, exclusive of some which I made into cider, leaving me 

 a net profit, over and above expenses, of $4,598.79. I have 

 charged the cost of fencing, the cost of the little manure I put 

 upon it, and the cost of some underdraining that it needed ; I 

 have charged eight per cent, on the estimated < value for rent and 

 taxes, and over and beyond all these expenses, that piece of land 

 has paid me $4,598.79; more than $100 a year profit per acre; 

 and all I did was simply to turn it to pasture, putting in sheep. I 

 do not think I put on $20 worth of any other kind of manure. The 

 trees have averaged only $1.85 per year. That looks small, but 

 when you take the aggregate, it foots up very satisfactorily. It is 

 more profitable than any other farming I do. I will state that last 

 year there were only sixty bushels of apples in that orchard, so 

 that some other years yielded pretty heavily; one year, 1,002 

 bushels, another 1,025, and another 704 bushels. I have turned 

 in young stock since, which have done very well, but the trees 

 are now somewhat old, and the bark hard, so that calves have no 

 inclination to gnaw them. I turn horses in sometimes, they are 

 less injurious in an orchard than neat stock. They browse but 



