AND MAKING CIDER. 217 



cannot get back again. In all cases, food se- 

 lected deep in the soil, is aqueous and unwhole- 

 some ; and if the water be stagnant, the roots 

 canker and rot in the winter, which vitiates the 

 sap, and thus the tree becomes cankered and dis- 

 eased; and a tree thus situated, although it may 

 for the few first years produce fine fruit, and 

 afterwards, generally produce strong fine shoots 

 in the summer, these will become diseased, and 

 often die in the winter or spring. The fruit, 

 also, when a tree is in this state, is generally 

 vapid and imperfect, and a crop very un- 

 certain. 



In planting orchards, therefore, it will be 

 necessary, to ensure success, or permanent 

 and progressive prolificacy ; to guard against 

 those casualties, by underdraining and supplying 

 water on the surface, during very dry weather. 

 But the most effectual mode will be, in improper 

 subsoils, to form an artificial rock, as a found- 

 ation on which to plant the trees, about a foot or 

 ~a foot and a half underneath the surface of the 

 soil, which may be easily done by removing the 

 soil to the required depth, and laying a kind of 

 floor of stones, bricks, tiles, or slates, taking 

 care that the joints be well closed or stopped 

 with cement, that the roots may not penetrate, 

 as a tree extends its roots, even farther than its 



Q 



