OLD AGE REJUVENATED. 255 



locality finally becomes poor picking, unless the soil is often 

 replenished with the food which the tree may need. In a state 

 of nature this supply of food is furnished in a good measure 

 from the tree itself, in the decaying leaves and fruit ; but if we 

 carry this fruit to the cellar and carefully clear the ground of 

 the leaves, it is robbery, unless we return some equivalent in 

 the shape of compost. What this compost should be must be 

 determined in part by the nature of the soil. An universal 

 panacea has not yet been discovered, either in medicine or 

 agriculture, but we are inclined to the belief that wood ashes 

 contain most of the ingredients which apple-trees require. 

 Certain it is, that a compost made of one part ashes and three 

 parts muck, has answered a good purpose in our own orchard. 

 Some soils might require an addition of more lime than is 

 found in wood ashes, and in such case if the refuse plastering 

 from old houses can be added to the compost heap it will 

 prove a benefit as well as an addition. Many of our old 

 orchards are doubtless past recovery. Neglect and old age 

 have so reduced their vigor, that no medicine will avail for 

 their restoration. Good nursing will, however, do more for 

 these old settlers than we are wont to suppose. We know of 

 an old orchard in one of our mountain towns, how old we 

 cannot say, but it looked old to our youthful eyes some forty 

 years ago, that for the past twenty-five years has been made to 

 produce very fair crops of good fruit. The original trees were 

 chance seedlings, planted by one of the good clergymen of the 

 olden time, probably with a view of furnishing a little cider for 

 himself and guests, for not one tree in twenty furnished any 

 fruit fit for dessert. When this orchard came into the posses- 

 sion of the late Lieut. Gov. Hull, he dug around the trees, 

 dumped a load of chip manure around each tree, gave them a 

 liberal sprinkling of leached ashes, pruned and grafted, planted 

 potatoes around each tree in a circle of some twelve feet in 

 diameter, so as to insure a stirring of the soil, and some return 

 for his labor, and the result was not only a large yield of pota- 

 toes, but the rejuvenation of the trees, and for a series of years 

 some of the finest fruit that had ever been raised in the town. 

 But we cannot depend upon our old orchards forever. This 

 would be as unwise as depending upon our Shaker brethren " to 

 multiply and replenish and fill the earth." There is a limit to 



