STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 63 



and dig your sand and but it on the bog all the way from five to 

 eight inches. A bog that has eight inches of sand will last longer 

 than with five. You do not know what power a bedding of sand 

 on old vines will have on those vines the next year. They will 

 come up like great American families. Everywhere there will be 

 signs and promises of future growth and crops. 



You must plant the vines. With a little wooden tool you mark 

 out lines, both ways, longitudinal and crosswise. Where the lines 

 cross it should be fourteen inches apart. When you get the vines 

 set out, they must be twelve or fourteen inches apart. When we 

 want to set out the vines we put a man on where the vines are vig- 

 orous and cut them off. You do not want them too short, cut 

 them off all the way from six to seven inches and carry them upon 

 the bog in a basket ; if 3'ou put your own hands to the plow, then 

 take an ordinary stick and make a hole down through the sand into 

 the muck an inch or so and take three or four of these vines and 

 make a little wisp of them and put them into the hole, the ends of 

 the vine through the sand into the muck and push the sand about it 

 and you have your hill planted. If you mass tbe vines t' gether 

 in too big a bunch, they don't do as well. 



Now we have got one plant set out; we have got started. The 

 first year after you begin, you get a few. berries ; the next year, a 

 few more ; the third year a fair crop ; the fourth season is one of 

 the best unless you lose the crop by frost or some other cause. 



There are two divis'ons of the berries. The earl}^ blacks get 

 ripe two or three weeks before the later berries get ripe. There 

 would be this advantage to your Maine people. I think that Maine 

 is colder than southern Massachusetts, but I am told that we are 

 as liable to early frosts as you are here ; for twice on that Cape, 

 all have lost a large portion of our crop on the 13th of June. You 

 can judge whether Nature is worse with us than With you. It is a 

 fine looking berry and comes one or tvs^o weeks earlier 'than the 

 late berry. 



The largest berries are not as valuable, because they rot easily ; 

 more liable to indentation; because every time you handle cran- 

 berries with your hands they lose a certain value. \;The cranberry 

 vine is a great mixture of eccentricities. The cranberry vine seems 

 to have life like the life of a cat, but you take a wisp of hay and 

 throw it down cm a mat of cranberries, the chances] are that it will 

 kill your vines underneath. 



