312 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



a word or two. In my simplicity at the time, in view of 

 planting this vineyard, I had collected all the old bones I 

 conld find in a pile, and was calculating to plant the bones 

 with every grape-vine when I got ready, but the amount of 

 it was, I had only bones enough to put into just one row. 

 My vines this year (which, by the way, are pruned as Mr. 

 Hyde has described) averaged eight pounds to the vine, but 

 the first row, where I planted those bones, — they were old 

 skull and thigh bones, and everything of the kind that I 

 could pick up, — those twenty vines in that row produced 

 three hundred pounds of grapes. That was fifteen pounds 

 to the vine. I have no doubt that if I had planted the bones 

 with the other vines, every other vine would have produced 

 in the same proportion. 



Mr. Everett. Were those bones uncrushed? 



Mr. Slade. Uncrushed, crude bones, such as you would 

 pick up on the farm. 



Question. What did you get a pound ? 



Mr. Slade. I got eight cents a pound right through, and 

 a man in Providence, who bought them from the man to 

 whom I sold them, sent me word that they were the best Con- 

 cord grapes he ever sold in the Providence market. I thin 

 the grapes but very little. I trim on the spur system, as 

 Mr. Hyde does, precisely, as near as I can. I do it very 

 quick. I have a pair of shears and it is not much work. 

 We are troubled with rose-bugs about there, and, as Dr. 

 Fisher says, we meet them when they come, usually in the 

 morning while the dew is on my strawberries. I hire boys, 

 and give them five cents a hundred for all they will kill. 

 That is a standing offer, and I have some half dozen boys 

 who help me in that way. This year, I paid three dollars 

 and seventy-five cents ; last year, about half as much ; year 

 before last, about twice as much. That is the way it runs 

 with me. 



I am in favor of everybody raising grapes. Somebody 

 has said that the grape is the type of plenty, and the symbol 

 of happiness. It is even so. I raise crops which are more 

 profitable than the grape-crop, but I do not raise any which 

 gives me half the pleasure that the grape-crop does. In fiict, 

 I do not raise any fruit which I think is half as valuable as 



