42 



midal form, and furnished with bearing branches to the bottom. 

 As an evidence of his complete success -with pears on quince 

 stocks, he showed us trees of the Urbaniste which were but 

 fifteen years old, and which had each borne a barrel of fine pears 

 in a year. They were more than twenty feet high, and had borne 

 fruit for twelve years. Their appearance at the time of our visit, 

 loaded as they were with fruit of the finest character, ehcited nu- 

 merous exclamations of admiration. Trees were pointed out to us 

 of the same variety on the pear stock, growing in the same square, 

 and planted at the same time, which had never yielded a bushel 

 of pears. 



In relation to the cultivation of the ground for fruits, Mr. W. 

 adheres to the opinion he has several times expressed in his ad- 

 dresses, on the necessity of thorough drainage and proper prepa- 

 ration of the soil. He considers these requisites of absolute 

 importance for the production of fine flavored pears. He advo- 

 cates surface manuring ; protests against the use of fresh manure, 

 the digging or ploughing deeply among fruit trees, and abjures 

 reliance on circles dug around trees as a method of culture. The 

 following extract from his last address before the American Pomo- 

 logical Society, presents his views on this point, which we regard 

 as so important as to justify the space they here occupy. After 

 objecting to the cultivation of any other crop among fruit trees, he 

 remarks : — 



" Equally injurious, in my own opinion, is the habit of deep 

 digging or ploughing among fruit trees, thereby cutting ofi" the 

 roots, and destroying the fibrous feeders, which frequently extend 

 beyond the sweep of the branches. However necessary the practice 

 may be of cutting off roots in old orchards, in the process of reno- 

 vation, it should be carefully avoided in grounds properly pre- 

 pared, and where the trees are in a healthy or bearing condition. 

 From experiment and observation, I am persuaded that working 

 the soil among fruit trees, to the depth of more than three or four 

 inches, should be carefully avoided. The surface should only be 

 worked with a hoe, or scarifier, for the purpose of stirring the soil, 

 and keeping out the weeds. Thus we avail ourselves of the ad- 

 vantages of what, in farming, is called flat-culture, at present so 

 popular. For the same reason, manure should not be dug in to 

 any considerable depth, and some of our wisest cultivators now 

 recommend its application on the surface. So favorably impress- 

 ed with this ])ractico is the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, 

 that it has ordered a scries of experiments with cereal grains and 

 other products in the application of manures on the surface as 

 compared with sj)ecined depths beneath it. The practice of sur- 

 face manuring i.s no novelty of our day. An eminent cultivator 

 of fruits, nearly two hundred years ago, said, " Manures should 

 be applied to fruit trees in the autumn upon the surface, that the 



