CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL. 73 



ruinous. An acquaintance who purchased a hun- 

 dred peach trees and placed them in meadow land, 

 lost most of them, hy the overgrowth of the grass ; 

 and the. following winter the mice, who avoid clean 

 culture, destroyed the remainder. Every one was 

 lost. A clean, mellow, cultivated piece of ground, 

 kept so a few years, might have saved the whole 

 of them, and brought them soon into bearing. 



the corn shades the young trees more. A friend had a large 

 peach orchard sown with peas, and bordered on one side 

 with corn, in which one row stood. Such was the benefit 

 to the peach trees, from the hoeing given to the corn, that the 

 row standing in it was conspicuously marked out by the 

 deeper green of its foliage, at the distance of half a mile. 



