MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 155 



hundred and twenty of which, are of good size and quality, 

 and forty refuse. The expense of planting, hoeing and dig- 

 ging, will amount to nine dollars, ten bushels of second size 

 potatoes for seed, five dollars ; this added to seventy-one makes 

 eighty-five dollars, forty bushels of small potatoes for feeding 

 hogs, at fifteen cents, are worth six dollars ; leaving a debt of 

 seventy-nine dollars. The one hundred and twenty bushels of 

 marketable potatoes, must be worth at the meadow after dig- 

 ging, sixty cents per bushel to balance this. Present prices are 

 considerably lower, and if they continue, it will require a part 

 of next year's crop to make up the deficiency. I think wooded 

 swamp land can be reclaimed more profitably, than wild-grass 

 meadow. Two or three good crops of potatoes may be ob- 

 tained with little labor and no manure, and the grass afterwards 

 will be better than on land from which the crop has been 

 taken for many years, and nothing returned. 



Sudbury, Sept. 3tZ, 1849. 



Fruit Trees. 



Although the season has been unfavorable to the production 

 of fruit, there seems to have been no relaxation in the cultiva- 

 tion of trees. There were eleven applications for the premiums 

 on the different kinds of fruit. One of these came from Abel 

 B. Heywood, of Concord, whose apple orchard was in good 

 condition ; but having been planted before the year 1837, was 

 thereby excluded from competition. For a similar reason, the 

 peach orchard of E. Hutchings, of Westford, did not come 

 within the rule for governing the decisions of the committee, — 

 it having been planted before the year 1846. 



William Buckminster, of Framingham, offered for a premium, 

 a peach orchard, containing between two and three hundred 

 trees, on an acre and a quarter of ground. They were set in April, 

 1847, on land not manured, but since planted with beans be- 

 tween the rows of trees. Last spring, a shovel full of leached 

 ashes was put about the roots of each tree, which, Mr. Buck- 

 minster is confident, has a tendency to keep the mother fly 



