FRUITS AND I RL ir GROWING 



it is recorded that ''in 1791 the canker worms devoured 

 the orchards not only here but all over the northeast- 

 ern states, and their ravages were repeated the two fol- 

 lowing years. Orchards standing in stiff clay soil and in 

 low grounds which are wet in the spring escaped, but on 

 all kinds of light and dry soil the trees were almost as 

 dry on the first of June as the first of January. The 

 same insect has this year [1853] attacked the orchards 

 in the same manner and with the same result. The 

 trees, the fifteenth of June, were as brown as in autumn, 

 and almost entirely stripped of foliage. The fruit has 

 been entirely ruined, although at present writing [Au- 

 gust] the trees have again put on a fresh garment of 

 foliage. The eye of man could not well behold a denser 

 shower of vermin than these trees presented." 



One of the interesting prejudices of one hundred 

 years ago, relative to orchard management, will strike 

 the present-day fruit grower as queer, if not amusing. 

 This was the prejudice that prevailed against the grow- 

 ing of clover in the orchard. Several writers of that 

 time refer to having seen or experienced injury from 

 growing red clover in the orchards. One man in this 

 county reports that "he liked to have ruined his orchard 

 by raising crops of red clover on the land," but that 

 when, on seeing his trees decaying, he conjectured the 

 cause, "he left off raising the clover In his orchard, 

 when it soon recovered." Another man reports similar 



[so: 



