;104 CARKOLL COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 



grout is to prevent muskrats and crawfish from digging 

 through the bank. When the pond was ready to fill, I closed 

 the outlet through the tile with a few bushels of grout. The 

 outlet from the pond is made by imbedding a large flat rock in 

 water-lime mortar, its front edge resting upon the grout wall, 

 with other bed stones extending through and over the embank- 

 ment ; the side walls are then built of stone resting on these 

 bed rock, a cap stone is laid across and the whole covered 

 with earth. A wooden frame is made like the inverted letter n, 

 bedded partly into the side walls. A groove is made on the inside 

 of the upright pieces, to receive the screen to prevent the fish 

 from escaping. The water in the lower pond is from one to 

 eight feet deep. Several thousand of California salmon, from 

 one to two years old, are now in the pond, and are doing well. 

 There is also a smaller pond shown in the plan, between the 

 lower pond and the hatchery, where the young salmon are 

 kept until six months old. The water in this pond is about 

 three feet deep. I have stocked this pond with brook trout. 

 Myjiatchery, in the basement of the building, is capable of 

 hatching 200,000 fish at a time. It is also used for a creamery 

 in the Summer. Temperature of water, 50° at all times. The 

 upper room is of grout, resting upon a stone basement, and is 

 used for a tool house and repair shop. Several hundred tons 

 of ice were taken from the large pond last Winter, by farm- 

 ers and others from several miles around. 



MY EXPERIENCE WITH OECHABDS. 



In 1843 I set out my first orchard of about fifty trees. 

 The ground had a southern slope. The trees were seedlings, 

 and set two rods apart each way. In 1846 I began an- 

 other orchard (shown in plat) on ground with a northern 

 slope, putting them also two rods apart. In this orchard I 

 had, up to 1856, about 100 trees. The borers were quite 

 troublesome in both orchards, but the most so in the orchard 

 with a southern exposure. Our prevailing winds are from the 

 southwest, and as the orchards had no wind-breaks, the trees, 

 as they grew, had a leaning to the northeast; just the right 

 position for the trunks to get sun-scald. The Winter of 1856- 



