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orchards are over twenty years old, and still continue in a healthy. con- 
dition. The stimulants used thus to maintain the trees are liberal 
applications of barn-yard manure or ground bones to the extent of 
1,000 pounds to the acre. Sometimes muriate of potash and other fer- 
tilizers are applied, while the surface of the ground is kept open by 
frequent plowing and harrowing during each season ; judicious pruning 
and shortening-in is considered essential to the healthy condition of 
the orchard. The usual remedy for the peach-borer, or worm, is to use 
the knife freely, and then apply a shovelful of slacked lime on the sur- 
face in close contact with the tree. 
The cultivation of pears has increased very considerably within a few 
years. Orchards of 4,000 trees in bearing are now to be found. As a 
rule, good growers, with proper treatment, are found quite remunera- 
tive. The greatest drawback is the blight, for which no remedy has yet 
been discovered. Dwarfs are much grown on the Eastern Shore and 
bear very heavy crops. 
Of apples, “‘ only the very superior early and late kinds are remuner- 
ative.” Plums are but little cultivated, owing to pervading and destruc- 
tive attacks of the curculio and black knot. Of cherries, the Early 
Richmond is the most popular for the market. The only disease to which 
cherries are subject in Maryland is the black knot, though a black 
aphis, in the early season, frequently attacks the young shoots. Grapes 
have heretofore been chiefly cultivated for table-use; but a few vine- 
‘yards have been started with a view to wine-making. The principal 
varieties selected for this purpose are Ives Seedling, Clinton, Catawba, 
Delaware, and Concord. 
BRAZILIAN COFFEE.—Dr. J. Moreira, of the Brazilian commission at 
the Centennial Exposition, has published a small pamphlet. on the coffee 
of Brazil, which traces that branch of production to a few seeds brought 
from French Guiana about the middle of the last century. Its culture 
began in the Amazon region, and passed thence to Maranhao, subse- 
quently to the province of Rio Janeiro, and finally to all the other prov- 
inces. Some of these regions are now covered with immense forests of 
coffee-trees, where improved processes of culture and new machinery 
have greatly perfected the growth and preparation of this berry for 
market. 
The coffee-tree in other countries is supposed to require an annual 
temperature varying between 62° and 66° Fahrenheit; but in Brazil no 
such limitations are noticed; it seems to grow almost equally well in all 
latitudes of the empire. The virgin soil of the cleared forest is planted 
with tress without special regard to its composition, but, in old lands, 
soils composed of two-thirds red clay and one-third of deposit are most 
desirable; reddish-yellow argillous soils on hill-sides, at a distance 
from the sea, are preferred. The taste and aroma of the coffee grown 
on bottoms is less agreeable than of that on the uplands. Trees are 
now propagated almost exclusively from the seed. The seed-beds are 
prepared in August, September, or October, and in a year the bushes 
are set out in the orchards, at the rate of over two thousand trees per 
acre, the interval of the trees in the rows being about 5 feet. The 
trees begin to bear at three years, but their average productive power 
is not realized till after five years from planting. The average annual 
yield is about twelve hundred pounds per acre. Each tree planted in 
rich land may be reasonably expected to average twenty pounds of fruit, 
but the general average per tree of coffee ready for market has a wide 
range, from one to seven pounds. One laborer can take care of twelve 
hundred plants, 
