18 CHARLES MASON'S STATEMENT. 



suppose them to have been three years from the bud when 

 set. The advantage, however, which they had, in point of 

 age, was fully compensated by the more careful treatment 

 which my trees had previously received, and by their having 

 been taken up properly and transferred while the roots were 

 fresh, to the places where they were to stand. My largest 

 trees, except two which are somewhat older, are those which 

 were set in 1862, when one year from the bud, some of which 

 measure nine inches in circumference. Trees that have had 

 one year's free growth from the bud, and have become well 

 confirmed upon the stock, if taken up, as they well may be, 

 with the roots nearly entire, and transplanted immediately, 

 will grow right along without seeming much to feel the 

 removal. 



The soil in which my trees are set is very light and sandy, 

 insomuch that persons sometimes have been led to entertain 

 a doubt in their own minds of its capability to bear anything 

 to much purpose. Underneath the surface soil is found, 

 mainly, gravel or sand of different degrees of fineness. 



Of the trees twenty stand twenty-five feet apart, in a row, 

 by the roadside. The other thirty-three are in three rows, 

 thirty feet between the rows, and the trees twenty seven feet 

 apart in the rows, upon ground sloping to the northwest and 

 so steep that the upper row stands upon an embankment or 

 terrace. This land was completely waste, overgrown with 

 laurel and other shrubs. The bushes were cleared off and 

 the ground plowed as well as it admitted, and after a couple 

 of years' hoeing, being partially subdued and smoothed 

 down, the trees were set, the first in 1863, the rest the next 

 year. The ground has been plowed and cultivated from 

 year to year, with hard crops, chiefly potatoes and beans, and 

 manured for planting, but only in the hill, and that quite 

 moderately. 



When the trees were planted places were dug for their beds 

 eighteen to twenty-four inches in depth and five feet or more 

 across. These were filled a<rain with the best of the surface 



