178 THE APPLE CULTURIST. 



stood in grass ground for a number of successive years, 

 and for some unknown reason fail to produce fruit, that if 

 swine were confined about them for a month or so, the ef- 

 fect would be such on the trees as to render them produc- 

 tive. Perhaps, digging about them with a spade, and ma- 

 nuring, would be attended with the same result. We have 

 our eye on several trees in that neighborhood, which bore 

 no fruit for many years ; but when the plough was applied 

 to the soil beneath them, they brought forth good crops. 

 The facts also furnish an unanswerable argument in favor 

 of cultivating the soil about fruit-trees, if nothing more. 



It is an excellent practice to allow swine to have the 

 range of an orchard after the trees have come fully into 

 bearing, as they will usually devour all the fruit that drops 

 prematurely, and thus destroy the larvae of noxious insects 

 that may be in the fruit. In some instances, swine are per- 

 mitted to root up the entire ground, which may sometimes 

 be an advantage to bearing trees. Still, we have no faith 

 in such a system of cultivation. If the soil were thin, rest- 

 ing on a compact substratum, most of the roots would be 

 found near the surface of the ground. Hence, root-pruning 

 by swine would work greater injury than benefit to the 

 trees. A Western fruit-grower writes : " I have two or- 

 chards of sixty trees each ; in one my swine are allowed to 

 run from spring till the early apples ripen. A field crop of 

 any kind is never taken from the soil. This orchard never 

 fails of giving a full or fair crop of apples. The other is 

 kept in grass, which is mowed annually, and no stock is al- 

 lowed to run among the trees, as this can not well be done. 

 The result is, the orchard is not worth any thing for fruit, 

 and very little for hay." 



Re-grafting old Apple-trees. It is exceedingly difficult 

 for any person, however capable he may be of communi- 

 cating advice touching the management of orchards, to di- 



