ESSEX SOCIETY. 39 



some manure to each hole. 1 then set out the trees ; they all 

 lived, and made wood the first year from four to twelve inches. 

 In the autumn of 1846, '47 and '48, I put around them half a 

 bushel of barn manure to each tree, and in 1849, I manured 

 with muscle mud, and in the spring of each year I dug the 

 manure into the ground. The trees have made good growth, 

 and the present season from twelve to forty inches. 



In 1846, I planted the land with a peach nursery, and raised 

 a good crop of trees that I have sold, leaving seventy as stand- 

 ards, from which I have received a good crop of fruit the past 

 two years. I think they are a protection to the pear trees. Of 

 the diseases of the pear tree I have had but little knowledge ; 

 I have experienced the frozen sap blight, but as for a remedy, 

 I leave it for others to propose one. 



TOPSFIELD, Oct. 16, 1850. 



Royal A. Merrimii's Statement. 



The orchard of young fruit trees which I oifer for premmm, 

 was set out in 1848, this being the third year from planting out, 

 the fifth from the bud, and the seventh from the seed. 



Two hundred young trees stand on about two acres ; half 

 from Lake's nursery, (not the largest growth,) and the other 

 half were natural trees, planted but not worked, all of the same 

 age. The natural trees were grafted last June ; the whole in 

 the lot intended for the Baldwin apple, excepting some failures, 

 which have been supplied with the Danvers Winter Sweet and 

 Hubbardston Nonsuch. As I intend not to admit any feeding 

 off the ground, I have allowed the trees to branch out low. 



The ground was prepared, by ploughing, in the autumn 

 of 1847, in strips of five furrows twenty-two feet apart, and 

 the trees stand in these strips, about the same distance apart. 

 A square of four or five feet was dug the next spring, one foot 

 deep, and taken out, and six inches more loosened up in the 

 subsoil. One bushel of pulverized meadow muck was put 

 into the pit mixed with the top soil, and the tree placed in the 

 hole with the roots nicely spread out and covered, adding about 

 two shovels of straw manure near the surface, and covering 

 lightly with the remaining subsoil. The ground, from four to 



