YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 59 



at a depth of three and a half feet. In a stiff, retentive clay 

 bottom, they should be only twenty feet apart. Laying out 

 the Nursery. Divide and subdivide your land into plots and 

 compartments for the various articles which are to be grown ; 

 assigning special places to seedlings, stocks to be worked, cut 

 tings, layers, and specimen trees. This latter plot is very 

 essential to the proper management of the. nursery, and the 

 comfort of visitors. In this specimen plot should be grown 

 one or two samples of every tree in cultivation in the nursery, 

 the better to test their genuineness, quality, and constitution. 

 A place should also be given to manures and composts ; and 

 through the whole nursery broad roads should be made so as 

 to make every part accessible. Preparation of Ground. 

 An old pasture, or clover field, is best for nursery ground, for 

 the inverted sod gives just the right food for young trees. A 

 broadcast, light dressing of well-rotted manure, or compost, 

 should be applied before plowing. Plow very deeply, and sub 

 soil fifteen or eighteen inches, if possible. This roots your 

 trees well, lets surface water run down, and lower moisture 

 draw up, and in fact is every way requisite. Propagation. 

 Our cultivated varieties of trees cannot be propagated by seeds. 

 The particular qualities which constitute their chief value are 

 the result of hybridization, or of cultivation qualities which 

 are not transmissible in the seed. True, we may chance upon 

 better varieties by sowing the seed, but there are a thousand 

 chances against such good fortune ; and hence we resort to 

 grafting, budding, cuttings, layers, and suckers. And this 

 brings us to the subject of stocks, which is a most important 

 one in the propagation of fruit-trees. 



Without good stocks we cannot produce good trees, although 

 our soil, situation and cultivation may have been ever so favora 

 ble. Formerly, wild, self-sown seedlings from the woods and 

 orchards were thought good enough for the nurseryman's pur 

 poses, and even poor suckers from the roots of trees were used. 

 Experience has taught us better practice than this, and now the 



