APPENDIX. 



More Light from Experience. 



SINCE the foregoing went to press I have had an oppor- 

 tunity of conversing with a friend of Mr. J. H. Hale who 

 had just returned from a visit to Mr. Hale's famous close 

 root-pruned Georgia peach orchard, which last (the third) 

 year bore an enormous crop, and set as fine a one the present 

 season. But the ever-watchful curculio was on hand, and, 

 after the peaches that were stung had dropped or had been 

 removed by hand and destroyed, the actual yield from one 

 hundred thousand trees was only fifty-two car loads of fruit, 

 or a half-bushel per tree at five hundred crates to the car. An 

 orchard of eleven hundred acres near by, from which no 

 affected fruit was destroyed, gave a return of only eighteen 

 car loads. Mr. Hale waged a vigorous war from the start, 

 going over his orchard repeatedly, picking up the fallen fruit, 

 and taking from the trees that which showed signs of disease. 

 He has also kept the entire orchard continually cultivated, 

 with the determination to allow the curculio no food when 

 they first hatch out, and thus, if possible, to exterminate 

 them. But I fear this Napoleon of horticulture will meet his 

 Waterloo in Georgia. Such absolutely clean culture will not 

 only be enormously expensive, but actually impracticable in 

 many seasons. Let a continued rainy spell of several weeks 

 occur, and the grass will get too large to handle with the cul- 

 tivator, and must be plowed ; and nine hundred acres means 

 a great deal of work and expense. How much more econom- 

 ical to put the whole down to sod, and pasture with sheep, 

 or hogs with rings in their noses to prevent rooting, and thus 

 save all labor except an occasional mowing of weeds. The 

 animals would eat the fallen fruit, as well as keep the grass 

 down, and Mr. Hale could raise mutton, wool or pork as well 



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