24 APPLES, PEACHES, PLUMS AND QUINCES. 



fore partaking of a double degree of infirmity from decaying 

 trees. The maimed roots are forced, by stimulating manures, 

 to make wood ; when the trees are taken up the roots are 

 cut with spade and mattock, within six inches of the crown 

 of the roots, and packed to New England for our orchards . 



The Almighty made a tap root to the apple tree, to hold 

 the tree firmly in its place, and, in case of drouth, to draw 

 moisture from the subsoil, but modern culturists cut it off; 

 and the result is, where exposed to a strong current from 

 the northwest, the trees lean at an angle of forty-five degrees 

 to the horizon. The choice of soil and shelter hardly secure 

 a passing thought, and trees are planted in holes big enough 

 to insert a post, in blue clay and barren sand banks ; if not 

 too sterile to bear grass, perhaps, the next five years, the field 

 is mown. The grass crop has exhausted the soil, and stops 

 growing, and so do the young trees. 



The farmer puts in his plow, cuts off half the roots, and 

 having no deep roots, the trees are miserable apologies for 

 an orchard. 



In many sections the canker worm (anisoptery pometaria), 

 or the tent caterpillar, (clysiocampa Americana,) are allowed 

 to defoliate the trees, taking from them their very lungs and 

 digestive organs. When a little larger, the apple borer, 

 (seperda vivitata,) will bore into the young tree at the crown 

 of the roots, to sap its life, and should a friendly woodpecker 

 commence taking it out, some lazy village or city "pimp" 

 with gun and game-bag, trespassing on the farmer's orchard, 

 will shoot it. If the trees still live the (coccus J, or 

 scale louse, will fasten on the sickly branches and suck the 

 life blood of the trees ; the (aphis mail) attack the opening 

 buds, beside twenty other depredators on the growing twigs 

 and roots j the apple being, naturally, a very hardy tree, still 

 fruit spurs are prematurely formed, it blooms and produces 

 fruit. Our hills are denuded of forest trees, depriving the 

 atmosphere of the requisite moisture, the Borean blasts have 

 a free sweep from the north pole to the Gulf of Mexico, and 



