CROPS AND PROFITS. 139 



An Old Orchard. 



A CERTAIN proportion of mossy, ragged orch- 

 XJL arding belongs to almost every New Eng 

 land farm. My own, in this respect, was no exception ; 

 if exceptional at all, the exception lay in the fact 

 that its orcharding was less ragged and mossy than 

 most ; the trees were also, many of them, grafted 

 with sorts approved twenty years ago. Eight acres 

 of a somewhat gravelly declivity, were devoted to 

 this growth, of which four were in apple trees, two 

 in cherries, and two in pears. Intervals of two acres 

 each, on either side the cherries, of unoccupied land, 

 were in the old time planted respectively with plums 

 and peaches. Of these, only a few ragged stumps, 

 or fitful and black-knotted shoots, remained. Their 

 life as well as their fruitfulness had gone by ; and I 

 only knew of them through the plaintive laments of 

 many an old-time visitor, who tantalized me with his 

 tales of the rare abundance of luscious stone-fruits, 

 which once swept down the hillside. 



The whole enclosure of twelve acres had relapsed 

 into a wild condition. The turf was promiscuously 

 an array of tussocks of wild-grass, dwarfed daisies, 

 struggling sorrel, with here and there a mullein 

 lifting its yellow head, and domineering over the 

 lesser wild growth. Occasional clumps of hickory, 



