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VilAT TO I'LANT, AND HOW TO PLAJJT. ly 



known, may bo compared to trees covered with Ilyacinths. Alas ! neither of these 

 produce fruit. As for the Chestnut, it may be well to remark and remember tliat the 

 finer larj^e kinds of French Chestnuts may be budded or grafted on our native trees ; 

 and wlurcvor you already possess these, it is better to do this than to plant anew. 1 

 haj>pen to know a kind of old mortality grafter, who goes all about a certain town- 

 ship in Pennsylvania, begging permission to perform this operation, out of pure love 

 of valuable results. 



And why should we not have fruit and shade together ? Why is not the shade of 

 a fine Cherry tree as valuable as an Ash ? Believe me, young planter, it is equally so. 

 If you ever enjoyed the delight of getting up into the body of a big Ox Heart or May 

 Duke, when a boy, with free liberty to eat till you were sick, you have reminiscences 

 of which I would not deprive you. Ilave you ever shaken a Shell-hark Uickory tree, 

 and carried the nuts home on your back in a large grain bag ? Did you ever hull 

 Walnuts, and have black fingers for weeks thereafter, not being aware that soap 

 makes them blacker and vinegar and bran discliarges the color ? Did you ever go to 

 wild lands in your neighborhood, and bring home a bag of the red wild Plums? If 

 you have performed these feats, the first of your knowledge of the pleasures of acquis- 

 itiveness, when you plant will you not think of the succession of young and happy 

 hearts tnat will climb your plantation for a century to come — perhaps your own 

 descendants — and will you not gratify yourself and them by remembering this little 

 list ? I have now in my eye two places in the country where I used to be at home. 

 The one was so stocked with Cherries, that everybody within miles and miles was at 

 liberty to come with wagons and tubs, and take as many as they wanted ; another 

 produced so many Shell-barks that the market sale of them supplied pocket-money 

 for the year to a famous set of youngsters : and these trees were shade trees in every 

 valuable sense. 



It would be very easy, now that my pen has caught the inspiration of the subject, 

 to multiply examples, and to descant on the pleasure of getting two kinds of advanta- 

 ges out of our planting amusements ; to increase a list which I have purposely made 

 brief; to descant upon the further amusement of having many varieties of the same 

 kind of fruit on one tree ; to say that my best Pears came from new kinds grafted on 

 healthy middle-aged trees of old inferior kinds ; and to add that I cultivate some 

 trees and shrubs purposely for the health and attraction of my friends the singing 

 birds, and that few are better than the Buffalo Berry, the two sexes of which should 

 be "worked" on the same stem. 



To conclude, dig large holes for everytliing like a tree ; if in clay soil, burn all the 

 shavings in it you can get, before you plant ; drain with stones in a deep bottom (this 

 especially for roses); don't put fresh horse manure to evergreens — rather prefer leaf 

 mold, and that not in too great a proportion ; manure your fruit trees with a little 

 guano dug in, in spring and fall ; in your Pear orchard it will be better not to have a 

 spear of grass grow near the roots, where however a strawberry bed will thrive well 

 and do no injury whatever. I asked a man, last spring, who was apparently every 

 among his fruit trees, what he was doing. His answer was, "cultivating;" and 



