85 



the expense, labor and anxiety all for nothing. Better carry over 

 1,000 baskets than be 100 short. 



Beer Damage. — In some fields the trees, especially apple trees,, 

 are badly damaged by deer. The writer built a fence aroulid an 

 11-acre field, using woven Avire 55 inches high at the bottom, and 

 put two barbed wires about a foot apart on top, making the fence 

 about 6^2 feet high, putting the posts a rod apart at a cost of 82 

 cents a rod, put up. One of our good assessors told one of the men, 

 " We can assess him more for that field next year for putting that 

 fence around it." That is the way we fruit men have to take it. 

 The State protects the deer. We try to protect our trees from the 

 deer, and the assessor comes along and gives us a whack for doing 

 it. 



Pheasants. — In our own locality it looks as though we were 

 going to have, or rather already have a pest much worse than the 

 deer and harder to fence, — the pheasant. In the spring of 1911 

 there were many buds eaten in the writer's orchard. He was satis- 

 fied in his own mind that it was pheasant's work, for they were 

 often seen in the orchard, but never caught budding. However, one 

 of my neighbors saw one budding in his orchard a few days ago. 

 These birds are getting to be very numerous in this section. Twenty- 

 two were seen in an open field a few weeks ago. 



The writer has an orchard where there was about 550 peach trees 

 set ten years ago; this spring there are less than 200 left. In an- 

 other orchard of about 750 peach trees set seven years ago, this 

 spring there are 360 left. Yellows are to blame for nearly all of 

 these trees being pulled out. The best stump puller that ever came 

 into this section is a four-horse team, combined weight about 6,000 

 pounds. 



