No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 181 



Mr. Wood. That is one of the advantages that ma}^ be 

 derived, for most farmers grow their apple trees on land, as 

 I stated in my paper, which is of very little value for any 

 other purpose. A stony piece is of no disadvantage only in 

 cultivation. Of course, you can cultivate a piece without 

 stones in it, but they are a good deal of benefit to the trees. 

 There is a constant disintegration going on in the small 

 boulders in our soil. If you dig up an apple tree where 

 there was in the ground a lot of boulders, you will find roots 

 will cling to those stones as they will to a decaying bone. 

 They get moisture and they get food from the stone. In 

 fact, one of the best orchards, as it was said to l)e, in the 

 State for years, where the fruit brought the largest price, 

 was in Dracut, near Lowell. The ground upon which the 

 trees grew was so stony that Ihey could not plough it, and 

 the owner used to cultivate it with the hoe. He kept it 

 under cultivation all the time, and did it by hand. He was 

 growing the best fruit, and was among the best growers that 

 sent fruit into our Boston market. 



In regard to growing them without any fertilizer, I should 

 not want to try to grow any trees without a fertilizer. 

 I claim that there is no farm product which will return as 

 much money in proportion to the amount of fertilizer required 

 as an apple orchard. As I stated before, it is a biennial 

 crop, as a rule. The trees take every other year to recu- 

 perate from l)earing a full crop, and I think if you have 

 land, a side hill, that will produce under ordinary culture 

 forty or fifty l^ushels of corn to the acre, if you will get 

 that into condition and keep it under cultivation, putting on 

 as much manure as you take ofl' in crops, until those trees 

 come into bearing, if you won't allow a grass crop to come 

 in and take all the nourishment from the roots by intercept- 

 ing it, but give it the benefit of the air, and pick your crop 

 every other year, it will give you a good crop of apples 

 with very little expenditure for fertilizer. 



Mr. Wm. Bancroft (of Chesterfield). I had a pasture 

 which I did not think was worth ploughing, which was very 

 stony, not particularly rich, almost without verdure . There 

 were at least one hundred or one hundred and fifty apple 

 trees that came up scattered all over it, and the size might 



