34 SPRAYING THE APPLE ORCHARD. 



to warrant the neglect of spraying in the minds of most 

 of our apple growers will soothe your conscience into neg- 

 lecting it next year. Is not the question of spraying, after 

 all, like that of all "better farming," whether you are a 

 real farmer or fruit-grower, a producer, or whether you 

 are essentially a consumer, having planted an orchard, or 

 possibly reaping the benefit of one planted by your father 

 or grandfather, which gives you a biennial crop with prac- 

 tically no care on your part. Are you really producing a 

 crop? Are you not to a large extent dependent upon the 

 bounty of a too generous Nature? If we are to be fruit 

 growers and not mere consumers, we must fertilize, prune, 

 and spray; it is a debt owed the tree. Shall we make money 

 out of fruit-growing, for which there is no better opportu- 

 nity in the United States than here in New Hampshire, or 

 shall we take what the trees will bear, without always even 

 being thankful ? These principles are not particularly appli- 

 cable to spraying only, but are indeed those upon which all 

 betterment of the farming of New Hampshire must rest. 

 The great question in the improvement of New Hampshire 

 agriculture is not whether it can be made sufficiently profit- 

 able to be worthy of the best efforts of a man of ability, for 

 that is being constantly answered affirmatively ; it is not a 

 question of crops or methods whereby the profits of agricul- 

 ture can be increased and its life made more congenial, for 

 those questions are being, and will be solved ; but it is a 

 personal question for each individual agriculturist whether 

 he has sufficient interest in his work as a business to devote 

 the same intelligence and energy toward making it the larg- 

 est possible success, that is required of the man successful in 

 business, in a profession, or in manufacturing. These old 

 farms of the granite hills of New Hampshire are waiting, 

 ready to give a worthy return to men who, seeing the possi- 

 bilities in them, delight not in "wringing a living from the 

 rugged soil," but in so applying the laws of the science of ag- 

 riculture, that the soil will be enabled to bear the largest 

 and best of those crops to which it is best suited. For such 

 there is a life on New Hampshire's hills well worth while. 



