MOST FA VORABLE SOILS AND CLIMATE. 225 



assortment of varieties is rather more limited than elsewhere, I 

 believe ; but I have eaten a better apple from an orchard at Bur- 

 lington, Vermont, than was ever grown even in the south of Eng- 

 land. We may congratulate ourselves then, that all that we 

 need to raise the best apples in the world, anywhere in the 

 northern United States, is fortunately to be procured much more 

 cheaply than a long summer would be, if that were wanting. 

 The other thing needful, judging from the experience of England 

 for a length of time past record, in addition to the usual requisites 

 for the cultivation of ordinary farm crops, is abundance of lime. 

 This is experience ; and science confirms it with two very satis- 

 factory reasons : first, that apple-tree wood is made up in a large 

 part of lime, which must be taken from the soil ; and, second, 

 that before the apple-tree can turn other materials which it may 

 collect from the soil and atmosphere into fruit, it must be furnish- 

 ed with a considerable amount of some sort of alkali, which requi- 

 site may be supplied by lime. 



There is but little else that we can learn from the English or- 

 chardists, except what to avoid of their practices. The cider 

 orchards, in general, are in every way miserably managed, and 

 the greater number of those that I saw in Herefordshire were, in 

 almost every respect, worse than the worst I ever saw in New 

 England. The apple in England is more subject to disease ; and 

 I should judge, from what was told me, that in a course of years 

 it suffered more from the attacks of insects and worms than in 

 America. The most deplorable disease is canker. This malady 

 is attributed sometimes to a "cold, sour" soil, sometimes to the 

 want of some ingredients in the soil that are necessary to enable 

 the tree to carry on its healthy functions, sometimes to the gen- 

 eral barrenness of the soil, and sometimes to the "wearing out of 

 varieties" The precaution and remedies used by gardeners 



(rarely by orchardists) for it, are generally those that would 

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