8 WESTERN SERIES OP READERS. 



would be better for the trees and better for the 

 markets if fewer buds were allowed to " set." 



In southern California, this year, many peach 

 orchards have been left to drop their fruit on the 

 ground. There were too many peaches to the 

 tree, and the same with the apricots. The fruit 

 was small. Five dollars a ton, and sometimes 

 three dollars, was the price offered. It did not 

 pay the growers to market the fruit. Had there 

 been only a few dozen peaches or apricots on a 

 tree, these few would have brought good returns. 

 So we read in the farmers' papers this advice: 

 "Thin out your fruit in the spring!" The ordi- 

 nary farmer does not think it pays him to hire a 

 man at two dollars a day to pick the fruit from 

 the overladen branches. So the apricot and 

 peach orchards are left to their own way. This 

 way is to ripen bushels to the tree, and these are 

 little things the markets do not want. The less 

 fruit on a tree, the larger and finer it is sure to be 

 when ripe. The linnets would do the "thinning 

 out" for the farmers, if they were not persecuted 

 so. The birds would take the buds, and so pay 

 the farmer for what fruit they might claim in 

 summer. But the farmer "hates the sight of a 

 linnet," and if he sees a dozen of them in a peach 

 tree, in the spring, or any other time, he picks up 



