SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 427 



addition the ground can be so sheltered that snow will lie on the surface 

 most of the winter, the trees will be healthy and abundant crops will reward 

 the grower. 



Salt has been generally recommended as a specific manure for the quince. 

 It is undoubtedly helpful, but it owes its good effect more to its influence 

 in keeping the soil moist and preventing its deep freezing, than to any in- 

 herent manurial properties. There are undoubtedly times when salt is ab- 

 solutely hurtful to quince trees, applied in large quantities after deep culti- 

 vation, which has broken, torn and bruised the tender roots. Of the mineral 

 manures potash, in the form of wood ashes, leached or unleached, we have 

 found most beneficial. 



It is not best to attempt the growth of an extra large crop from young 

 trees. If the fruit is thinned the specimens will grow much larger, and the 

 crop be worth an additional price. A poor, inferior lot of quinces is very 

 undesirable property to dispose of in market or to use at home. 



Quinces for Peofit. — Waldo F. Brown of Oxford, Ohio, relates this ex- 

 perience: I planted, about twelve years ago, .twenty trees on heavy clay 

 land and we have not missed a crop since they came into bearing. The trees 

 were planted in a single row, eight feet apart in the row, which would give, 

 if the rows were twelve feet apart, about four hundred to the acre. I have 

 not kept an account with these trees, but think that we have averaged a dollar 

 per tree from them each year for the last five years. I think they have never 

 been killed by frost since they came into bearing, and we have had some very 

 trying seasons in that time. No other fruit is so salable, and tbey will bear 

 shipment to a distant market better than even winter apples, for they do not 

 bruise easily, and do not rot quickly when bruised. If handled carefully we 

 find no difficulty in keeping them until December. I trained my trees to a 

 single stem and have had no trouble with borers. The only disease from 

 which the trees have suffered is a twig blight. It differs from the pear 

 blight by being confined to the ends of the branches, and does not seem to 

 affect the general health of the tree, although it renders them unsightly. They 

 have much the appearance that our forests had some years ago during the 

 invasion of the seventeen-year locusts. I have an orchard of over one hun- 

 dred quince trees, set twelve feet apart each way, and I prefer this distance 

 as it enables us to cultivate them with horses. In starting an orchard I use 

 one-year-old trees, and would rather have them at the same price than older 

 ones. I cultivate the orchard a few years in potatoes, beans, etc., and when 

 the trees get large enough to shade the ground, give one plowing in the 

 spring and spade round the trees, and then do nothing further except to 

 mow the weeds. From my experience during the last ten years, there is no 

 fruit that I could plant with so good promise of making money as the quince. 



THE GOOSEBERRY. 



A writer in the New York Tribune talks sensibly about gooseberries as 

 follows: The gooseberry is beginning to rise to its deserved place in popular 

 estimation. As the fine English sorts, like European grapes, cannot endure 



