46 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Let farmers prepare the soil properly and give proper care to 

 their young orchards, and they will see a satisfactory result. 

 Young trees must not be set in post holes, as was formerly done, 

 with the roots jammed in and the holes filled up solid, and when, 

 if the tree leaved out the first year, the delighted owner 

 Exclaimed, " It is alive .'" but the soil should be prepared broad 

 and deep, with every root spread out carefully and naturally. 

 Then the tree will get such a start the first year as it will never 

 forget, and it will amply repay all extra labor in the coming 

 years. I have set fruit trees the past season that have already 

 grown from thirty to forty-two inches. 



I advise, either to enclose the field well, keep out all animals 

 entirely, prune, cultivate, protect from insects, and take care of 

 your trees as you would a choice garden plant, or not attempt 

 orcharding at all. Forty years ago a gentleman purchased fifty 

 apple trees, and employed an English gardener, who understood 

 the business, to set them out, while he himself was absent for a 

 few days. Returning, after two days, he found, to his great dis- 

 appointment, that the gardener, with hard labor, had planted 

 but ten trees. The next day sufficed for the gentleman and the 

 gardener to set out, " after a fashion," the remaining forty trees. 

 But after years proved that the ten trees faithfully and thor- 

 oughly planted, and thereby properly started and brought for- 

 ward the first year, were of more value than the remaining 

 forty. Thorough culture in orcharding will repay, while a slack 

 and slovenly one will not. James W. Brown. 



Framingham, September 5, I860. 



WORCESTER NORTH. 



Statement of Epliraim Graham. 



The orchard I offer for the society's premium consists of 

 fifty-six trees, all of which are Baldwins, transplanted May 6, 

 1862. 



The land was an " old bound out pasture," producing only a 

 small quantity of feed ; but laurel, hard-hack, so called, sweet 

 fern and mullein were in abundance ; the surface soil is a light, 

 sandy loam generally ; the subsoil, by no means calcareous, but 

 clay intermixed in small quantities with gravel and loam, and 

 in some parts of the field small quantities of sand, so that on 



