Vermont State Horticultural Society. 61 



so that every part of the tree can have a fair share of its benefit. 

 We have learned that by experience in selling our fruit; because 

 you know that a northern spy as red as blood, creamy and crisp 

 inside — like some of these on exhibition here — is the very best 

 apple that grows,, save one that is so scarce nowadays as hardly 

 to be counted ; while a northern spy grown in the interior of 

 the tree, or where it was shaded by another tree, green on the 

 outside and green on the inside, is the poorest apple save one, and 

 I won't mention that in good apple company. 



"But," someone says, "what's the use of talking about it?" 

 We have no control over the sunshine, we have to take what we 

 can get. It is about the same with other things, the soil and 

 the water, which the trees and shrubs need. To be sure we can 

 increase a little the fertility of the soil ; and we can drain the land 

 a little, if it is too wet, or irrigate, if is too dry, though we 

 never do that in New England. But we don't set an orchard 

 on a sandy waste and undertake to make it fertile or damp 

 enough artificially. We select the piece of land that is best 

 adapted to the purpose, that has the right kind of soil, we take 

 the best piece we have and then help it all we can. So we can 

 select on our farms,, when we are about to plant an orchard, the 

 field that is best located to catch the sunshine. I am aware 

 that we are not accustomed to think much about that. Twenty- 

 five years ago, in the State of Maine, where I then lived, they 

 were beginning to advocate the planting of apple orchards on 

 the northern slopes, because they would not dry up so much 

 in the summer, and would not start so early in the spring. I 

 don't know what the result is ; but I venture to say that, though 

 those trees may grow and produce fruit,, the fruit will not be 

 of good quality, it can't possibly be. 



The most of our tillage land in Vermont lies down in the 

 bottom of deep valleys ; and, consequently, in many portions of 

 the farm the sunshine is limited in quantity. But somewhere, 

 on almost all of those farms, there are fields lying up in the 

 broad sunlight all the day. In many places there are southern 

 slopes, with springs of water,, where the ledges are turned up 

 edgewise, ledges of slate or limestone, so the water oozes out. 

 If you set an orchard on such a slope, you may have to set it 

 with a crowbar, but trees, especially plum and apple trees do 

 love to get their feet down into the cracks of the rock, they do 

 love to follow the seams down ; the apples that grow on those 

 trees will be rosy cheeked and of different flavor from those 

 that grow on the northern slopes. Let me illustrate this by a 

 bit of diagram. Suppose a hill slopes 30° — and there are many 

 Vermont meadows that slope more than that — then the southern 

 slope gets 100 per cent of it, the level land about 86 per cent, and 



