34 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



way. Certainly no lower standard should ever be attempted than 

 that of preparing the land for a large crop of corn. 



If I mistake not, a large majority of the attempts at raising 

 orchards in this State have been in the following manner : A piece 

 of land was plowed up in the field without being separately 

 fenced, then planted with potatoes and corn for two years, and then 

 sowed with grain and grass seed. Just at this point the apple 

 tree agent contrives to be present, and the owner buys twenty- 

 five dollars worth of thrifty trees from a Western nursery and sets 

 them out in as small holes as possible. The limbs grow half an 

 inch that year. The next year they leave out and the branches 

 grow a quarter of an inch. Two or three in a favored spot do 

 something more. The tliird year he finds several of them dead, — 

 browsed down by his cattle on the previous autumn, broken down 

 by the snow, burned to death by the sun, or what is more likely, 

 every leaf has been gasping for breath ever since it was set out, 

 and it dies by being literally starved to death. The trees have 

 been paid for, but woe to that apple tree agent if he makes his 

 appearance at the end of the third year 1 Five or six of them are 

 left to struggle on with the vain hope that some time or other in 

 the Providence of God, they will produce apples as large and as 

 handsome as the pictures in the apple tree agent's specimen 

 book. I think I do not exaggerate when I tell you that a million 

 dollars' worth of fruit trees have been starved to death in this 

 State within the last thirty years, — starved in just the way I have 

 endeavored to describe the process. As the farmer looks at a 

 black hearted apple tree, or feels its spongy bark, and sees it 

 dying in this way, he is throwing out of his life his best years of 

 labor and hope, and the blood flows through his system more 

 sluggishly, than if he was filled with joy at his thriving orchard 

 well laden with fruit. lie who has a young and thriving orchard 

 never grows old. The loss of a young orchard is a calamity. 



Mulching. 



It may be within the province of my address to call your atten- 

 tion to the subject of mulching. I think that the experience of 

 nurserymen is in favor of vegetable substances for this purpose, 

 and that in no case either for mulching or as a manure, should 

 undecomposed animal manures ever come near the roots of an 

 apple tree ; a compost such as may be made on most farms from 



