MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



tree. An open fallow with crops in the inter- 

 vals, would certainly, if sustained for a period 

 of years, have contributed far greater thrift 

 than the trees now possess. But an open fal- 

 low is no protection against the curculio and 

 the apple moth. If there be a protection so 

 simple, and of such proportions as to admit of 

 its application to a marketable crop, I am not 

 yet informed of it. A few worthy old gentle- 

 men of my acquaintance, catch a few millers 

 in a deep-necked bottle, baited with molasses, 

 which is hung from the limbs of some favorite 

 tree overshadowing their pig-pen; and they 

 point with pride to the results. I certainly 

 admire their successes, but have not been 

 tempted to emulate them, on the extended scale 

 which the mossy orchard would have afforded. 

 Some persistent amateurs and pains-taking 

 gentlemen do, I know, succeed in making the 

 young fruit of a few favorite plum trees dis- 

 tasteful to the curculio, by repeated ejections 

 of a foul mixture of tobacco and whale-oil 

 soap,— by which the tree has a weekly bath, 

 and an odor of uncleanness. But in view of 

 a large orchard, where apples make a leafy 

 pyramid measured by cubic yards, and cher- 

 ries carry their fine fruit sixty feet in the air, 

 there would be needed a projectile of dirty 



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