ARTIFICIAL PLANTING OF TREES. 357 



of raising the seedlings, the proper time to transplant them, the 

 soils adapted to them, have been too often the tediously slow 

 work of experience, and hence repeated failures. Many farmers 

 are, therefore, deterred ; but would they take some slight notice 

 of, or read some treatise on the subject, such errors would be 

 few. Much of this work could be done by the junior members 

 of the family, who are to reap the most benefits hereafter. And 

 then, again, from what the observation of many years has shown, 

 I am convinced that there is no farm so barren that could not 

 be immensely improved by attention to tree planting. There 

 is no reason why farmers should not be arboriculturists as well 

 as the men of fortune and of taste. Why leave this branch of 

 industry and profit to them ; and why not learn from their 

 experiments what costs tlie farmer nothing, but brings him in 

 sure results of profit ? True, every farmer is interested in 

 orcharding, but arboriculture belongs to him likewise. Indeed, 

 the arboricultural art addresses him rather the more of the two 

 pursuits, and he might better plant shade and timber trees than 

 fruit trees. The orchard, in its wider sense of a place for fruit 

 growing, belongs rather to the horticulturist than to the farmer. 

 The usual and necessary avocations of the farm cannot afford 

 the requisite time for care of the choicer apples, pears and 

 peaches, which are the best fitted for the market, as the market 

 now-a-days is expected to be ; and while the insect foes have so 

 much increased in numbers and in their ravages, more demand 

 still is made of the farmer's time to keep them in clieck. A 

 few trees could supply the family ; but to raise market fruit 

 has become an occupation of its own. Even the apple trees 

 should have no ordinary care, would they pay well and make 

 a return of all their possibilities. A very few acres of land, kept 

 in excellent heart by careful manuring, by judicious pruning, by 

 washing the trunks with alkali to destroy vermin, in fine, by 

 the art of fruit culture, would, 'if near an available market- 

 town or city, yield a greater return than farms of much wider 

 area. And these few highly cultivated acres would afford the best 

 sorts of apples, the choicest kinds of pears, and the most delicious 

 cherries ; yet all these are the results of a horticultural rather 

 than an agricultural department of industrial toil. I repeat, 

 then, that trees requiring such attention do not belong to the 

 farmer, for he could not spend the time, bear tlie cost, nor devote 



46 



