g6 THE FRUIT GROWER'S GUIDE. 



soil is thoroughly moistened. The quantity required will depend on the condition of 

 the soil, as regards moisture and the need of manure. Where it is moist a four-gallon 

 pailful per square yard will be enough, but where the soil is dry and poor double or 

 treble the quantity will not do any harm, and is necessary for the proper moistening 

 and enriching of the ground. The holes should be filled up with any good soil, or, in 

 poor soil, preferably with a rich compost, such as loam, wood ashes, leaf-mould, or de- 

 cayed manure in equal parts, well incorporating with each bushel three or four pounds 

 of bone-meal, ramming the mixture well down. Used in the manner suggested, 

 the trees will be insured against drought, while the roots will soon find the rich 

 material, and transmit increased supplies of nutriment, to the certain benefit of the trees 

 and the improvement of their fruit. In the absence of sewage, stable, or manure 

 drainage, excellent liquid manure can be made by dissolving the best Peruvian guano, 

 at the rate of a pound to ten gallons of water, for applying to exhausted trees in 

 well-drained soil in winter. 



RAISING FRUIT TREES. 



Seedlings. New varieties of fruits are obtained by sowing the pips, stones, or seeds. 

 It is the worst of all methods of raising trees for bearing that the inexperienced can 

 adopt. There is only one element of certainty about it, and that is the most unsatis- 

 factory one of at least nine-tenths of the trees, after occupying the ground for years, 

 producing inferior or worthless fruit. The vast number of useless apples, for instance, 

 that encumber the ground in various parts of the country, are the result of the bad 

 habits of possessors of trees in raising seedlings from them. Scores of these have been 

 named, and increased by grafting, that ought to have been burnt ; and still more have 

 no recognised names, yet are permitted to occupy space uselessly that might have 

 afforded profitable crops of excellent fruit if varieties of proved worth had been 

 planted. It is through the seedling-raising practice pursued through successive genera- 

 tions, and the retention of the trees, that the general standard of British apples has 

 fallen so low. "When a person raises a new fruit from seed he is apt to attach a value 

 to it to which it has no claim ; and even if the variety is evidently inferior to estab- 

 lished sorts, he has not the courage to destroy it. It is necessary to speak the truth on 

 this subject, however humiliating to a fruit-growing nation, and the truth is this : there 

 are twenty times more inferior varieties of apples in the orchards and gardens of this 

 country than of superior ; and that fact, for fact it is, is sufficient to account for the 



