ORCHARD FRUIT CULTURE. 



37 



be content. Thus, I received the trees, 

 planted themout on " lands," as the plough- 

 men call it, twelve feet wide, with a deep, 

 dead furrow between ; which, of course, 

 throws the soil into ridges, with an eastern 

 exposure, on a slight declination, carrying 

 the surface water all one way to the foot 

 of the orchard. The soil is a clayey loam, 

 on a clay subsoil, as before described, with 

 a portion of iron ore intermixed in the soil, 

 and occasionally found in minute lumps, 

 like gravel, which, by the way, I do be- 

 lieve, from observations of my own, and 

 the remarks of others in this journal and 

 elsewhere, to prevent, in a great measure, 

 the "fire-blight." At all events, there is 

 none ; nor has there, to my knowledge of 

 more than twenty years, been any fire- 

 blight in this immediate section, although 

 it rages about Lewiston, below the "Moun- 

 tain Ridge," on the " Clinton Group" soils, 

 to an almost fatal extent, where there is 

 little or no iron detected in the soil. How 

 all this is to eventuate, time must prove. 

 I speak only from observation. The pear 

 orchard is, on my farm, where there are a 

 few trees of many years' growth, vigorous 

 and healthy. 



The dwarfs on quince I planted twelve 

 feet apart, on the crown of the ridges, or 

 " lands." The standards on pear stocks I 

 planted continuously in rows with the 

 dwarfs, every alternate twelve feet, so that 

 they stand in quincunx form, twenty-four 

 feet apart on the M lands," yet but eighteen 

 feet apart in quincunx, — too near perhaps ; 

 but 'twill be many years before they get 

 too close, when the smaller growing trees 

 are intermixed with the larger. Of course, 

 they are only one-half in number on the 

 same area of ground to the dwarfs. The trees 

 were all planted in good, well ploughed, 

 pulverized ground ; and all the trees that 

 were sound and healthy when planted, 



succeeded finely. In parenthesis, I will 

 remark, for the benefit of those who pro- 

 pose future planting, that the quince stocks 

 did better than the pear stocks ; for the rea- 

 son, that the former has a more fibrous 

 root, and the test was in examination. 

 Owing to an error in the measure, by which 

 a part of the planting was done, some of 

 the trees were sadly out of line ; and in 

 filling up the ground the past spring, I had 

 to take up and remove several of the most 

 vigorous, which had made a growth of one 

 to three feet of new wood last year, — the 

 same season they were planted. To re- 

 move them, I placed a man with a spade 

 on each side, and myself, with the stock in 

 hand, drew up the tree as they pried it out 

 of its bed. It took a strong pry on the 

 spades, and a vigorous pull with my own 

 arms to get them out. So luxuriantly had 

 the roots penetrated, and that too into the 

 heavy red clay subsoil at the bottom. The 

 pear stocks, however, grew well, but did 

 not make equal growth to the quinces. 

 The past spring I obtained another 500 

 trees, of like kinds, and planted the remain- 

 der of my pear orchard. The ground was 

 cultivated last year in Indian corn and 

 roots. This year it will be sowed in buck- 

 wheat, and seeded down to grass ; the fu- 

 ture cultivation of the trees to be as al- 

 ready mentioned with the apples. 



I am now about to relate what many may 

 consider as an act of great Vandalism ; but 

 which, nevertheless, I have acted upon, 

 after mature thought, and all the investi- 

 gation of authorities which I have been 

 able to command, — and that is, to cut off 

 three-fourths at least of these celebrated 

 kinds of pear that I have planted, and re- 

 graft them with other varieties of my own 

 selection. I want to cultivate market fruits, 

 of decided merit and reputation ; for I am 

 not disposed to convince the public against 



