PREFACE. 



I sing of the apple, with roseate bloom, 



That flourished in mazes of verdurous gloom 



In Eden's fair bowers in tint and in shape 



The apple that vies with the peach and the grape. EPWABDS. 



FKOM early boyhood the writer of this little treatise has been 

 practically engaged, more or less every year, in the propagation of 

 apple-trees and the management of orchards. As there is no little 

 manual on " Apple Orchards " in all our agricultural and pomolog- 

 ical literature which a beginner may study as a reliable guide in 

 every branch of apple culture, and as the author in early life was 

 obliged to advance from one step to another, in the rearing and 

 management of apple-trees, by the slow and often uncertain way 

 of determining the better practices by experiments, he feels war- 

 ranted in preparing a small volume, in which are embodied the 

 successful results of the experience of more than forty years. 



Most of the works on pomology are either too voluminous and 

 expensive to meet all the requirements of men who need a cheap 

 book containing brief directions for beginners, or the writers have 

 assumed that their readers already possess a pretty correct under- 

 standing of that branch of pomology which treats of the correct 

 mode of propagating apple-trees, and the most satisfactory manner 

 of managing apple orchards in order to produce profitable crops 

 of fruit. 



Every beginner will always encounter certain difficulties in the 

 production and management of apple orchards ; and he must nec- 

 essarily learn how to overcome them in a reliable and satisfactory 

 manner, either by experiments conducted frequently, amidst per- 

 plexing doubts as to the ultimate results, or he must be furnished 

 with the results of numerous experiments made by practical po- 

 mologists, which he can rely upon with the same confidence that 

 he would feel if he had worked out the same results on his own 

 grounds. -The aim of the author, therefore, has been to supply 



