THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FARM. 17 



and most certainly approve the feed, besides doing us 

 personally much good, by burying a lot in furtherance 

 of future trees. We buy them also, at 2s. the bushel, 

 for the fattening pigs, who most amazingly delight in 

 the change. Of exceedingly fine Spanish chestnuts we 

 have a vast abundance, that is equally appreciated by the 

 animals and partaken of freely, both cooked and raw, by 

 the human household also. Filberts and walnuts, which 

 were plentiful the last, have quite failed us this year ; 

 and the smart little squirrels seem to have followed in 

 their wake. Our last year's store we kept in large 

 earthenware pans, in the cellar ; and they were de- 

 liciously juicy up till May, when the foolish gardener 

 exposed them to the sun, and they dried, sprouted, and 

 were spoilt. No apples of any sort — not enough, 

 verily, to grace even our autumn desserts, which would 

 be sadly scanty if it were not for the profusion of fine- 

 flavoured grapes that have ripened in and out of doors. 

 But of apples, not any — not even of the tasteless cider 

 sort, enough wherefrom to crush out a short half-cask ; 

 and — will you believe it ? — only last year it cost us all 

 but £7 to pick up the superabundant crop on these 

 very orchards, at the rate of Id. per bushel. And yet 

 I did my trees well. I had them scraped of the moss, 

 and washed with soapsuds, and duly pruned, and the 

 turf around the butts raised, and a thick coat of 

 twelvemonth's-old compost of lime and night-soil • laid 

 on — a plan which a great grower of American apples 

 recommends as infallible — and yet no produce ! There 

 was abundant promise, certainly, in the shape of pink 

 and snowy blossom ; but the blight came, and a sort of 

 grub that withered up and rolled each leaf : a canker 

 about the root of each young fruit that bit it off, so 



