6TATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 301 



clay subsoil, deep plowing and harrowing will be all the preparation 

 required. If the surface soil be sandy, on clay subsoil, prepare as for 

 gravelly subsoil; and in after cultivation add fertile loam with ma- 

 nures to the surface. 



Don't be afraid of wet soil, if it be underlaid with a porous, lime- 

 stone clay subsoil. Some of our best Duchess are where we can get 

 water within four or five feet, and they bear our largest and best col- 

 ored apples. The extreme dryness of our climate requires that the 

 tree get a very large amount of its moisture from the soil. 



Prof. Budd says that in some of the dry localities of Russia fruit 

 growers water their orchard by a system of irrigation This last Au- 

 tumn my father visited the oldest orchard in the Northwest, that at St. 

 Joseph, Mich. He tells me that the trees are 109 years old, and are 

 still producing good crops. About all left of this orchard is the lower 

 row of trees — near the water, and only four or five feet above the St. 

 Joe river at low water mark. They have been submerged at times to 

 a depth of eight feet. 



Again, in our neighborhood, in 1884-5, Duchess on sandy clay, and 

 gravelly subsoil were nearly all killed. But none were killed or even 

 seriously injured on moist clay subsoils. 



To further sustain my position I will introduce to you some of the 

 experienced writers of the Country Gentleman. One who signs him- 

 self D. S. B., from Washington county, New York, says: "I am led 

 to believe that the cause of the death of many trees is too little moist- 

 ure in the soil during the severe winters. Lands long cultivated 

 in the usual manner become incapacitated for retaining moisture as 

 they formerly did, and in some way this affects ' the tree in cold 

 weather. * * * Even in our wood lands after a dry autumn and 

 severe winter many trees die wholly or in part, the following spring 

 and summer. Fifty years ago our best orchards were on our dryest 

 hills; now they are on our cooler moist loams and slate hollows, and 

 yet we see seedling trees growing and bearing abundantly in the fence 

 corners, and depressions on dry hills where snow drifts accumulate in 

 winter, and where the soil is always more moist. * * * One orch- 

 ard of two hundred trees set eighty years ago on broken land — are all 

 dead, but those on the lowest, moistest soil, and these bear in spite 

 of a half century of neglect. ' " 



B. F. Johnson, Champaign, 111., says : " Try the experiment of giv- 

 ing a few fruit trees the benefit of a thorough wetting of the roots 

 before the winter sets in. The advantages are : a soil saturated with 

 water does not freeze so hard, or the frost injure the roots of trees as 



