CHARLES MASON'S STATEMENT. 19 



soil about the spot, intermingled with a bushel or so of 

 leather chips and waste, and as much, or rather more com- 

 post from barn cellar, consisting of loam, barn manure, vege- 

 table waste, and the like, with sink water, &c. When these 

 ingredients were well forked over, a peck or thereabouts of 

 leached ashes and two quarts of air slaked lime to each 

 tree, were spread upon the surface and slightly dug in, and 

 then the trees were set. 



Since the setting I have had, every year, a few shovelfulls 

 of the same compost spread about each tree and dug in with 

 the soil in the spring. Through the summer the ground 

 about the trees has been hoed over occasionally to keep the 

 weeds down and the surface light. After some of the trees 

 were set, the weather proving dry, I had such of them as 

 were in the most exposed situations, mulched to some extent, 

 a thing, by the way, well worth doing in all cases, especially 

 with young trees. 



These things, together with clearing the trees thoroughly 

 of caterpillars, when occasion required, and a little pruning, 

 constitute about all the care and attention they have re- 

 ceived. I have not aimed or desired to force the growth of 

 the trees, and with the soil, such as it was, and the compara- 

 tively slight manuring that has been bestowed upon them, 

 the growth they have made has been, in the main, to me 

 quite satisfactory. 



The pruning that has been done to the trees has consisted 

 in cutting out shoots when too thick or interfering, and in the 

 spring heading back such as were too luxuriant, or strag- 

 gling, or where the habit of growth of the tree is too aspir- 

 ing ; the aim being always to keep the trees well down, alike 

 for convenience and for their own security, and to preserve 

 the heads handsomely proportioned and well balanced and 

 open to admit freely the light and the air. 



My orchard is made up of the following varieties : (winter) 

 Baldwins 17, common apples 5, Roxbury Russetts 4, R. I. 

 Greenings 3, Spitzemburg Esopus, King of Tompkins Coun- 



