FRUIT CULTURE. 373 



$1,500 per year for fruit, but those are far between. Mr. Shaw 

 of Buckfield set 100 New York trees ; the tenth year he raised 100 

 barrels ; he refused $1,000 for the orchard. Mr. Albion Ricker of 

 Turner,- 1 have been informed, raised $1,000 worth of apples on 

 twelve acres, the eighteenth year from the seed. John R. Pulsifer, 

 Esq., of East Poland, has an orchard, not a very extensive one, 

 that produces from $800 to $1,200 per year. There are said to be 

 in Maine TO, 000 farms ; now take half that number, 35,000, if these 

 produce on an average $50 worth of apples a year it amounts to 

 $1,150,000, and this amount is not half it might easily be in fact. 

 Look at the account of C. Butterfield of Sidney, given in the Maine 

 Farmer, April 2, 1870. He says one man sold from one tree $15 

 worth in one year, another sold $60 worth from one tree the same 

 year. Now let each of these 35,000 farms in Maine devote one 

 acre of land to apple trees, plant sixty trees, have them produce 

 one barrel each, at $4 per barrel, this amounts to $240 per acre, 

 and for the whole it amounts to $8,400,000, which sum at the 

 present price of flour would furnish bread for every individual in 

 the State of Maine. 



Transplanting. 



Many spoil their trees by tearing them up as they would a worth- 

 less shrub, splitting and breaking the roots ; and in many nurseries 

 the roots are cut short with a spade. Instead of such treatment 

 the earth should first be loosened around the trees, they should 

 then be gently taken up with all the roots possible ; and by all 

 means take them up before vegetation commences. Much more 

 depends upon proper planting than many people suppose. I have 

 seen men dig a hole as they would to set a post, crowd in the I'oots, 

 fill up the hole with gravel or coarse lumps of earth, and leave it 

 to die. There is a good lesson in a story related by S. W. Cole, in 

 his Fruit Book, of a farmer dismissing a hand because he set only 

 nine trees in a day, during his absence ; the next day he set the 

 balance of a hundred himself. When they bore fruit the nine set 

 by the hired hand proved to be more valuable than the ninety-one 

 set by himself. 



Dig deep, broad holes ; they should be one or two feet wider 

 than the roots extend, and eighteen or twenty inches deep ; fill in 

 the centre with loam to the height at which you wish to set the 

 heel of the tree ; if the roots are broken off or split, first cut the 

 ends with a sharp knife, place the tree in an upright position, spread 



