512 PYRUS MALUS. 
have occurred amongst the standards, from accident or disease, at the time of 
removal. Among other advantages resulting from the wide planting of orchards, 
may be mentioned the healthful and invigorating influence of the sun on every 
part of the trees, and thereby causing them to bring forth more fruit, and that 
which is larger, fairer, and better flavoured ; for an apple, of a globular form, three 
inches in diameter, contains twenty-seven times more bulk, than one of an inch 
in diameter, (globes being to each other as the cubes of their diameters.) Hence 
apples are not to be valued by their number only, but by their size ; and indeed, 
by their weight; for most weight must be expected where there is most juice, 
and juice will follow health and vigour.* Another important advantage is, that 
trees planted at wide intervals from each other, have more room to spread, with- 
out the interference of their roots and branches, and consequently will bear a 
greater quantity of fruit. A tree with a hemispherical head, fifty feet in diame- 
ter, will have twenty-five times as much fruit-bearing surface, as one of the same 
formed head ten feet in diameter. In other words, circumstances being equal, it 
would produce as much fruit as twenty- five of the smaller trees, although it 
would occupy but little more than one half as much ground. 
The usual mode of planting out trees in an orchard, is the square-form ; but 
the system most esteemed and adopted by the ancients, was to plant them in 
quincuncem, that is, in the form of the Roman numeral V., which answers to four 
asterisks placed in the corners of an oblong square, with a fifth midway between 
them. The two modes may be illustrated by the following diagrams : 
QUINCUNX-FORM. SQUARE-FORM. 
The quincunx, when compared with the square-form, saves one eighth of the 
ground, and has the advantage of disposing the trees at equal distances apart in 
every direction.! The vacant spaces which will be left at the ends of every other 
row of standards, may be filled with supernumerary dwarf trees, and allowed to 
remain permanently. To plant temporary trees between the principal ones, so 
as to divide the distances into halves, will require about two supernumeraries for 
every principal one, by the square-form, and a less number by the quincunx- 
* Papers of Mass. Agr. Soc, 1804, p. 85. 
f The following is a practical method of laying out an orchard by the quincunx -form : First, deter 
mine the points for the centre of each tree in the outer row, by setting stakes at equal distances apart 
say fifty feet. Take a line one hundred feet in length, with a knot or mark in its middle, and place its 
two ends at two contiguous stakes ; then extend the knot or mark till the whole line becomes stretched 
in two equal lengths, and the knot or mark will indicate the place for a tree in the next row, where there 
should be driven another stake. Repeat the same operation with a second pair of stakes in the outer row, 
and another point will be determined in the next row, where there must also be inserted a stake. In like 
manner, continue with all the other stakes, checking, in the mean time, each of the stations by oblique, 
cross, and longitudinal sights, till the whole be completed. Every tree in such an orchard, will be fifty 
feet from each of its neighbours ; but the rows will be only forty-three and three-tenths feet apart and 
this distance is to fifty feet nearly as seven is to eight. Consequently, one eighth of the ground wi.. be 
saved, as intimated above. In order to show the distance of the rows apart by the quincunx-form, the 
