76 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



The soil for pear-trees should not be too rich ; if it is, they 

 will grow too rank, be more liable to blight, and less likely 

 to form strong fruit-buds. You cannot starve them, how- 

 ever, any more than you can any crop, and expect it to suc- 

 ceed. Keep them thrifty. We would urge upon all who have 

 not already tried it the use of a pen or hogsheads, into which 

 can be put the sweepings of the house, chamber-slops, meat- 

 bones, old shoes, leaves, and other refuse of the house and 

 garden, which, when scattered around the place, make the 

 yard untidy and unwholesome, and which would, when 

 accumulated in a mass, and deodorized with fresh earth 

 thrown upon it from time to time, be a surprise in the 

 amount and richness of the compost that would be so bene- 

 ficial for the fruit-trees. The soap-suds of the washing-day 

 of an average-sized family emptied around the grape-vines 

 and fruit-trees are equal to a wheelbarrow-load of manure. 



Ashes from coal or wood, from the latter being best, are 

 excellent for fruit-trees. Coal-ashes put around trees — say 

 ten inches to one foot high at the trunk, extending out two 

 or three feet — are recommended as a good protection to the 

 roots, like mulching, giving the trees a better start in the 

 spring. Top-dressing in the fall is by far the best method of 

 manuring fruit-trees whenever they are not making a thrifty 

 growth. We think that trees when so treated are less likely 

 to blight than when manure is ploughed or dug in. We 

 should not advise manuring heavily at any one time, but give 

 them a slight top-dressing every fall with well-rotted manure 

 (as straw or coarse manure harbors mice), and it will be 

 found more favorable to thriftiness, productiveness, and 

 exemption from disease. One or two shovelfuls of fresh 

 cow-manure applied to the trunk of the tree we have tried 

 with success against mice in winter. 



Change of soil by transplanting accomplishes astonishing 

 results sometimes. We have known a tree, barren for years, 

 to be taken up and transplanted a hundred feet, to soil dryer 

 and more gravelly, and produce fruit abundantly afterwards. 

 .A Bartlett pear-tree considered worthless, growing in the 

 border of a cold-grapery, in rich, deep garden-soil, on 

 which the fruit (not much larger than an English walnut) 

 was black, and badly cracked, was given to our chairman by 

 Dr. Davidson, in Gloucester, to try the effect of change of 



