THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANURING ORCHARDS. 461 



there annually, we are not informed. But we do know, first, that 

 the crop this season, numbered several thousand barrels of New 

 town pippins, of a size, flavor and beauty that we never saw sur 

 passed ; and second, that the Pelham Nevvtown pippins are as well 

 known in Covent Garden market, London, as a Bank of England 

 note, and can as readily be turned into cash, with the highest pre- 

 mium over any other goods and chattels of the like description 

 Now the great secret of the orchard culture at the Pelham farm, if 

 the abundant use of lime. Not that high culture and plenty of 

 other necessary food are wanting ; but that lime is the great basis 

 of large crops and smooth, high-flavored fruit. 



Again, the greatest difficulty in fruit culture in America, is to 

 grow the foreign grape in the open air. It is not heat nor fertility 

 that is wanting, for one section or another of the country can give 

 both these in perfection ; but in all sections the fruit mildews, and 

 is, on the whole, nearly worthless. An intelligent cultivator, living 

 in a warm and genial corner of Canada West, (bordering on the 

 western part of Lake Erie,) had been more than usually successful 

 for several seasons in maturing several varieties of foreign grapes 

 in the open air. At length they began to fail even upon the 

 young vines, and the mildew made its appearance to render nearly 

 the whole crop worthless. Last season, this gentleman, following a 

 hint in this journal, gave one of his grape borders a heavy dressing 

 of wood ashes. These ashes contained, of course, both the potash 

 and the lime so necessary to the grape. He had the satisfaction of 

 raising, this season, a crop of fair and excellent grapes, (of which 

 we had occular proof,) from this border, while the other vines of the 

 same age (and treated, otherwise, in the same way) bore only mil- 

 dewed and worthless fruit. We consider both these instances ex- 

 cellent illustrations of the value of specific manures. 



We promise to return to this subject again. In the mean time 

 it may not be useless to caution some of our readers against pursu- 

 ing the wholesale course with specifics which all quack doctors are so 

 fond of recommending i. e., " if a thing is good, you cannot give 

 too much." A tree is not all bones, and therefore something must 

 be considered besides its anatomical structure important as that 



