124 Notes and Gleanings. 



But his operations have not been confined to the planting of apples alone. 

 In the mean time, he has planted, — 



4. Of pears, say about a hundred trees, of eighteen or twenty sorts, most of 

 which are now bearing fruit. These are about equally divided between the 

 standards and dwarfs. Results favorable. 



5. Of peaches he has planted three hundred, of different ages ; about half 

 of them being of the budded varieties, and the remainder choice seedlings. 

 Peaches in his vicinity do not usually afford a crop oftener than each alternate 

 year ; the seedlings uniformly hardiest and most productive. 



6. His plum-orchard only numbers from twenty to thirty trees, mostly of 

 bearing age. Results variable. 



7. Cherries. Mr. Hammond has planted of these quite extensively. To his 

 earlier plantings of two hundred trees in all, mostly Early Richmonds and Eng- 

 lish and common Morellos; he has added this spring eight hundred more Early 

 Richmonds. These are generally top-grafted on the Morello ; his experience 

 being to the effect that those thus worked are more productive than if on their 

 own roots. This question, however, is still an open one in Illinois, and even in 

 his own neighborhood. 



8. Two acres of grapes, — twenty odd sorts, — mostly Concords, Clintons, and 

 Catawbas, and three acres of other small fruits, — blackberries, Lawton ; raspber- 

 ries. Purple-cane and Doolittle Black-cap ; gooseberries, Houghton ; currants, 

 Red Dutch and White Grape ; and strawberries, Wilson's Alban}-, — complete 

 the list of fruits. 



9. And, ninth and lastly, this enumeration of horticultural operations would 

 be incomplete without a mention of the one important fact, that this fine fruit- 

 farm — without doubt the finest in the county — is enclosed and subdivided with 

 an Osage orange hedge-fence of over three miles in length, most of which 

 affords a safe protection against horses, mules, and cattle, or the most diminu- 

 tive porker of the prairie land-shark breed, — a species of which there are yet 

 some examples extant. 



What Yankee boys can do on the sterile sands of New Jersey, or among the 

 golden sands of El Dorado, let others tell ; what they can accomplish within 

 their rock-bound coasts or on their native granite-hills, you may best judge : 

 but what one has done whose intellectual nature has been expanded by the free 

 air of the prairies, the above unvarnished statement will show. 



Hamilton, III. 



