58 YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 



acres, producing annually $500,000 worth of trees. In the 

 whole Union, there are annually sold fifteen to twenty millions 

 trees, for say $5,000,000. His subject he would treat under the 

 several heads of locality ; soil; arrangement ; preparation of 

 the ground; propagation of stocks ; grafting; treatment of trees 

 in the nursery; and digging up. A commercial nursery should 

 be located near a large city, town, or village, both for the fa 

 cility of getting a supply of labor, manure in abundance, imple-> 

 ments, post-office, and railroad, or other transportation ; and a 

 preference should always be given to a fertile and prosperous 

 agricultural region, for obvious reasons. 



Surface. The surface of a nursery-ground should be nearly 

 level ; if sloping, the slope gentle and nearly uniform, not only 

 for the convenience of working and planting in straight lines, 

 but because hilly ground is so washed in rains as to do great 

 damage. Shelter. There should be, if possible, some natural 

 shelter high ground, woodland, or orchards, to break the force 

 of winds in winter and spring. If these natural shelters can 

 not be had, plant parallel belts of rapid-growing trees, such as 

 spruce or larch, in the form of hedge-rows, at a distance of two 

 hundred or three hundred feet apart, all over the grounds. 

 Soil should be dry and deep, neither too light nor heavy. 

 Light sandy soils require heavy and frequent manuring, and 

 produce weak trees ; and retentive clays give too little fibrous 

 root to trees, ripen them badly, make transplanting difficult, 

 and good removal almost impossible. Stony soils impede the 

 progress of tools, and are in every way objectionable. On dry 

 soils, naturally drained, trees mature their wood well, and are 

 therefore hardy when transplanted. The coarse-grained, rank, 

 watery trees grown on prairie soil, freeze to the ground in a 

 temperature that would not affect those grown on more favorable 

 ground ; it being the fluid, and not the solid parts of a plant, 

 which are acted upon by frosts. A nursery needs much more 

 thorough drainage than ordinary farm fields. The drains should 

 be never more than two rods apart, and were better to be laid 



