20 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tunate or feeble habit of growth, that the samples of fruit on 

 the exhibition tables would commend to you. If you leave 

 the selection entirely to the nurserymen, of course you will 

 get only the strong, vigorous growers ; and if you make your 

 own selection from the catalogue alone, you will have many 

 troublesome specimens. Having already a selected list, it 

 will be best to select, personally, in the nursery, choosing only 

 those with strong stems, well-balanced heads and roots, — the 

 best trees of each variety. Few will take this trouble, and a 

 still smaller number have the skill to make a judicious selec- 

 tion. All the best growers do not bear the best fruit, and in 

 our eagerness to get shapely trees, we may loose sight of our 

 ultimate object, — the fruit. 



Nurserymen raise good trees, but we are not satisfied with 

 the way they are taken up ; many of the roots are so muti- 

 lated that the tree can never recover from the shock. We 

 can excuse them for mistakes about varieties, but we cannot 

 excuse their wholesale mutilation, amounting often to the 

 destruction of what they have propagated with so much care 

 and skill. Their only excuse is the press of business, — no 

 time to spend, and the difficulty of getting help that can be 

 trusted. 



We prefer spriug planting, with no very satisfactory reasons 

 for the preference. If fall planting is undertaken, we would 

 attend to it early, so that the wounded roots might commence 

 repairs, and the earth become well settled before winter. At 

 planting, cut smooth all broken roots, and remove fully one- 

 half of the head by thinning out and cutting back. In the 

 mellow, well-ploughed soil, the holes need be only large enough 

 to receive the roots, carefully extended. Pack fine dirt around 

 the roots, avoiding manure, especially if fresh. The roots 

 should not be allowed to get dry, though the tree may live 

 and lose most of its roots ; yet a rainy day has no special 

 advantages for this work. At such times the sticky earth will 

 not pack about the roots, and spaces will be left, than which 

 nothing can be more fatal to success. Not one tree in a hun- 

 dred need be lost, yet it is too true that, taking into account 

 the losses from animals and insects, from freezing and drying 

 of the roots, and careless removal and planting, probably not 

 fifty of the fruit-trees raised in our nurseries are alive at 



