No. 4.] FRUIT GROWING. 75 



apple orchard entirely l)y itself, so far as any crop is con- 

 cerned, and a peach orchard entirely by itself, so far as 

 any crop is concerned. Keep them alone ; don't mix up 

 orchards. 



Regular planting is important ; that is, planting at regular 

 distances and in straight rows. That enables you to have 

 very much cleaner culture, and then it looks better ; and my 

 idea is to get a lot of fun out of looking at trees and fruits. 

 There is a pleasure in seeing them grow. I know that in 

 our peach orchard in Connecticut, when the fruit l^uds were 

 killed and there was no hope of getting any crop that year, 

 I have had hours and hours of pleasure in walking through 

 the orchard or sitting on the fence and just looking at the 

 trees. You do not plant an orchard simply for the pleasure 

 of looking at it, and of course I am not recommending you 

 to do it ; l)ut I say you better have it in such form that you 

 will take pleasure in looking at it. Some of my own 

 orchards have been simply planted by ploughing the ground 

 as straight as it could be ploughed, checking it off in that 

 way, and setting out the trees there, and we found them not 

 quite even enough ; others have l^een planted liy a regular 

 survey. Never until I planted an orchard in the South did 

 I find a man who could plough a straight row. I wonder if 

 Professor Roberts has found it out as I did. He gave us a 

 lot of "taffy" about Massachusetts Yankees being so much 

 wiser than the farmers over in New York State. I do think 

 the Yankees are a pretty smart people, that we here in the 

 North are a pretty lively set of men ; but I never was able 

 to find a man who could plough an absolutely straight row 

 until I went down South and gave my negro a mule and 

 told him to go to work and lay off rows to set out a peach 

 orchard. I have got a line of peach trees in rows more than 

 a mile long that I do believe if you put a surveyor's transit 

 on it you would not find a tree two inches out of line. I 

 never saw anything like it in my life. The trees are as 

 straight as a string. Did you find anything like that down 

 in Mississippi, Professor Roberts ? 



Professor Roberts. They know how to draw lines 

 crooked and keep them at equal distances. 



Mr. Hale. There is no getting by that man. He will 

 make a crooked row straight. 



