REQUISITES FOR SUCCESS. 115 



ards, as if a piece of ground of certain dimensions, and a given 

 number of trees stuck into it, without any particular regard to 

 the quality or condition of either, would, by the grace of nature 

 alone, be amply sufficient to insure success. Experience was a 

 dear schoolmaster, but many were receiving his teachings on 

 this subject now-a-days with great seriousness, and he hoped that 

 knowledge and wisdom would be increased thereby, though to 

 many, he feared the acquisition would come too late to admin- 

 ister much of either profit or comfort. For himself, were he 

 about to begin the business of orcharding anew, he would be 

 far more particular in selecting soils and locations, varieties of 

 fruits and styles of trees ; prepare his grounds much more 

 thoroughly and expensively ; plant fewer trees and plant them 

 more carefully, and then bestow on every ten the attention he 

 had heretofore divided among a hundred. This his own experi- 

 ence and observation had satisfied him was the only proper way 

 of growing fruit at this day, whether for profit or for pleasure. 

 He would add but two things more : first, that in preparing for 

 the planting of pear-trees, he would trench the soil — not dig a 

 ivell and fill it up again; but loosen the ivhole surface of the 

 soil, and enrich it with a variety of animal and mineral ma- 

 nures, to tivice the depth ordinarily reached in these processes ;* 

 and then, having the soil well fitted and the trees carefully 

 selected, his advice would be to throw the latter into the fire 

 sooner than set them, if either the surface be found habitually 

 wet, or the subsoil very retentive of moisture. It would be 

 better economy to purchase the fruit desired by devoting the 

 land to more profitable purposes. Second, in these days of 

 multitudinous and midtitudifying insect depredations, he would 

 by no means fail so to locate an apple orchard that he could 

 conveniently occupy it, whenever he chose, as a hog-pasture. 

 This he fully believed to be the very best possible mode of 

 ridding an orchard of and keeping it free from its insect ene- 

 mies, and realizing again such crops as our fathers did before 



* He had followed the tap-root of a common red clover plant downward 

 to the perpendicular depth of nearly five feet ; and the pear root extending 

 itself naturally in the same direction, he could not think it safe to disre- 

 gard this indication of nature in preparing the soil to receive it. The most 

 successful instance of pear-culture that had come to his knowledge was on 

 grounds that had been carefully trenched and manured to the depth of 

 six feet. 



