122 ABC OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



but the cut straw between the plants can not be seen except by 

 moving the foliage aside ; but in the whole patch there is no 

 ground visible nothing that can soil the berries. During pick- 

 ing time the straw is tramped down in the paths much flatter 

 than it appears in the picture ; and one of the worst troubles, 

 if it was a trouble, was the long stems of the Haverlands thrust- 

 ing themselves right square in the paths in order to get sun- 

 shine to ripen. I believe Mr. Terry proposes to make the paths, 

 especially through the Haverlands, a little more than a foot 

 wide hereafter. Over in the field beyond the fence we saw the 

 wonderful crops of wheat 35 or 40 bushels to the acre, right 

 straight through the field. There are no trees on Terry's prem- 

 ises, except around the house. He does not tolerate a tree in 

 his grain-fields at all. 



A gravel walk led around to the front door, and a gravel 

 driveway on the other side of the lawn led around to the rear 

 of the house. Friend T. has a gravel bed, or bank, on his own 

 farm, and therefore it is not a very expensive matter to have 

 neat gravel walks all about his home. The painters had also 

 been at work about the house; and when I suggested that most 

 of us would think that it did not really need painting, he 

 remarked that it was cheaper to paint before buildings really 

 needed it, in the common acceptation of the term ; and there 

 we have the same story over and over again all over friend 

 Terry's premises. Every thing is done before it begins to 

 suffer from lack of attention. The weeds in the strawberry- 

 beds are killed before they get to the top of the ground. His 

 fourteen-acre potato-field is tilled in the same way, even dur- 

 ing this remarkably wet season. The potatoes stood so regu- 

 lar through the field that one might think they were spaced by 

 machinery, which, in fact, they were, by the machinery of the 

 potato-planter. Instead of there being hills of potatoes, how- 

 ever, there was a single stalk standing up like a little tree, each 

 one just like its neighbor, as in the strawberries. This comes 

 from the " single-eye " idea. If we let a great lot of sprouts 



