ESSAY ON THE APPLE. 61 



teen inches more. Avoid the use of animal manure, so far as 

 possible, using ashes, muck, well-decomposed leaf-mold, bono 

 dust, and things of like nature instead. 



TRANSPLANTING. 



Transplant from seed-bed to nursery in the fall. Raise the 

 plants from the seed-bed carefully with a spade placed at such a 

 distance and inserted so deep as to do as little injury to the 

 roots as possible. Prune off all small fibres ; they will never 

 work again, but decay and transmit disease to the tree. Cut the 

 tap-root and all others that show an exclusively downward ten- 

 dency, and prune off all broken or bruised roots with a smooth 

 cut. Open trenches, running north and south, and sufficiently 

 far apart to admit of easy culture with a cultivator or horse-hoe, 

 without injuring the trees, say from three and a half to four feet. 

 Set the trees eighteen inches apart in the trenches ; put the 

 earth slowly and carefully about them that it may come in con- 

 tact with all the roots ; press it gently with the foot, using care 

 not to displace the tree so as to make the row crooked. Set a 

 trifle — say an inch lower in the ground than they stood before, 

 for the soil will settle about them. Cut back to a vigorous bud 

 one foot above the ground. 



If the stocks have made a good growth, they will be ready for 

 budding in one year from transplanting. 



It is perhaps unnecessary to note that whenever care in culture 

 has produced improvement in fruit, seedlings from such fruit 

 sometimes improve on their parentage and furnish us with some- 

 thing still better. But there is a strong tendency for them to 

 return to their wild or native character. 



The chances for getting good fruit from seedlings are so few 

 that from the earliest time of which we have liorticultural know- 

 ledge, artificial methods for preserving and propagating varieties 

 have been employed, among the principal of which are budding 

 and grafting. We prefer the former for several reasons, among 

 which are : 



1st. It can be done when we have more leisure than in spring, 

 the time when most kinds of grafting must be attended to. Root 

 grafting is an exception, and has its advantages. 



2d. In grafting, we are obliged to use two or more buds on 

 one stock ; in budding, only one. This, when propagating rare 

 varieties, is sometimes important. 



3d. If the first operation does not take or grow, we can re-bud. 

 Grafting, illy performed, spoils the stock. 



