AN APPLE ORCHARD SURVEY OF WAYNE COUNTY, NEW YORK. 301 



TABLE 24. 

 Distance apart and yield in bushels. Threes set before 1880. 



Four-year average : 



Not over 30 x 30 feet 186 bushels 



31 x 31 to 35 x 35 feet 222 



36 x 36 to 40 x 40 feet 229 



It might seem that the closer plantings would include many old trees, but the 

 change in the distance apart has been made largely since 1880. 



happening till some year he finds that instead of an orchard of well- 

 rounded apple-trees he has a lot of forest trees with a bouquet of leaves 

 at the top. 



In the end the bearing surface becomes the nearly level surface on the 

 tops of the trees. This is a very small surface when compared with a 

 succession of well-rounded tops. (See frontispiece.) If trees are 30 x 30 

 feet and are left till they interfere so as to kill the lower limbs, the bearing 

 surface approaches the level surface on the top of the trees. Each tree 

 approaches 900 square feet of exposure to sunlight, or bearing surface ; 

 or two trees approach 1,800 square feet. This is what was done in the 

 orchard shown in Fig. 60. The owner of this orchard started to cut out 

 half the trees about ten years ago. He cut down one tree, but it seemed 

 to make such a big hole that he decided to prune them instead. The 



