180 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Mr. Wood. Any time when you have time to do it ; but 

 the wounds will heal over more easily if trimmed in the be- 

 ginning of the season when it is beginning to make its growth. 

 A good practice for farmers who do not have time in the 

 spring is to go over them in the winter, and the small shoots 

 starting out from the main limbs and any small interlacing 

 limbs can be taken out at any time ; but if there are any 

 limbs of any considerable size they should be sawed off from 

 four to six inches from the body of the tree. If you saw 

 them off close to the tree, unless you are very careful, when 

 the limb breaks down as you are sawing it is very liable to 

 take a strip of the bark down with it, which makes a bad 

 wound in the tree. But if you saw them off six or eight 

 inches from the body, then it is a very easy matter to go 

 around with a saw and take off those stumps close to the 

 body of the tree. That is the safest and liest way to take 

 off limbs of any size. If you do not grow more than four 

 main branches from the trunk there will l)e very little occa- 

 sion to cut off limbs of any considerable size. The trouble 

 comes more from allowing limbs to grow so that they interlace, 

 and when they do you have got to cut them away. 



Question. I would like to ask Mr. Wood the name of 

 the insects that attack the quince ? 



Mr. Wood. The only one that I know of which troubles 

 the quince is the borer which gets into the l)ark. 



Question. And what would you do in case they attack 

 the tree ? 



Mr. Wood. I should watch and dig them out. I do not 

 know any better way. The borer is the worst enemy that 

 the quince has. 



Mr. F. W. Sargent (of Amesbury). There is one rea- 

 son I would recommend for setting an orchard on a hill 

 which jVIr. Wood has not stated, and that is, to utilize our 

 hills for some other purpose than pasturing cows, for I am 

 one who does not l)elieve in keeping cows in pastures at all. 

 We know that it is very difficult in many cases to get the 

 manure on the high hills and hillsides, and I would like to 

 know if it would be policy to set an apple orchard on a hill 

 or hillside without any fertilizer, or if we could use chemi- 

 cals to a profit in doing so ? 



