SETTING OUT TREES. 257 



foliage to the exclusion of fruit ; but we hear of no such com- 

 plaint at the East. The site for an orchard should be deeply 

 ploughed either with a Michigan or subsoil plough, and tlie 

 manure thoroughly incorporated with the soil before the trees 

 are planted. No subsequent culture will atone for the want of 

 this previous preparation. The balance of testimony is in favor 

 of keeping the orchard under the plough for a few years, either 

 letting it lie fallow or raising root crops, but no grain. This 

 has been our practice generally, but we have tried keeping ono 

 orchard in grass, digging around the trees occasionally with a 

 spade, and top-dressing the grass annually, and the experiment 

 has succeeded beyond our expectation. The trees may not 

 grow so rapidly nor come into bearing so early as where the 

 land is ploughed, but the trees are very healthy and have 

 produced as generously as other orchards, though we have not 

 failed of cutting two crops of grass annually from the same 

 land. When so much is taken from the soil, generous returns 

 must be made. If we cannot get something for nothing, we 

 certainly ought not to expect two somethings for a cipher. 



TRANSPLANTING. 



How we shall plant our trees, is well answered by that poet 

 of nature, Bryant : — 



" Come, let us plant the apple-tree. 

 Cleave the tough greensvvai'd with the spade ; 

 Wide let its hollow bed be made ; 

 There gently lay the roots, and there 

 Sift the dark mould with kindly care, 

 And press it o'er them tenderly, 

 As round the sleeping infant's feet 

 "We softly fold the cradle sheet : 

 So plant we the apple-ti-ee." 



Transplanting is trying to the constitution of trees, however 

 carefully " we sift the dark mould ; " but in the rougli manner 

 it is usually performed, the trees have much occasion to say, 

 " spare us from our friends." Our radical reformers do not 

 uproot society more cruelly than some rude hands transplant 

 trees. They seem to forget that a tree is a thing of life, tliat 

 the rootlets are tender as " infants' feet," and that every mutila- 

 tion of the trunk is as bad for the tree as phlebotomy ever was 

 33 



