STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 55 



those trees as good fruit, I think, as I used to raise in Winthrop. 

 In Winthrop I raised one year 300 bushels of Kussets. When I 

 went to Monmouth, that variety of fruit there was so small that I 

 was ashamed of it. I sent them to Boston, and they passed as 

 No. 2 in that market. Since then those very trees, by my cultiva- 

 tion, have borne as handsome russets as I ever saw, I have shown 

 them to people that were well acquainted with the apple, and they 

 thought it was a new kind, so fair and smooth did they look. And 

 it was cultivation that did it. My location now is not such soil 

 as I had in Winthrop. It is more of a granite soil, and rather a 

 clayey loam. It is my experience, that in any high lands where 

 an apple tree will grow, good culture with proper and judicious 

 pruning will produce good fruit. Many kill their orchards by 

 pruning. 



Mr. GiLE. Do borers infest your trees ? 



Mr. Smith, They do not in Monmouth. In that soil I have never 

 seen one, while in Winthrop where I was formerly, they are very 

 troublesome 



Mr. GiLE. Does the pasturing of sheep in orchard land tend to 

 the destruction of borers ? 



Mr. Smith. I should think it probable that it might in some 

 measure, because the borers are inclined to get where there is 

 grass. If the sheep feed it down, it would not give the borer so 

 good a chance. I think they are not so likely to trouble a tree in 

 cultivated land as where the ground is laid down to grass. But 

 the soil, I think, has much to do with the borer. Some soils they 

 can winter in well, others they cannot. I have never had any 

 trouble from them in Monmouth. While in Winthrop they were 

 very troublesome. The reason for it I don't know. 



Mr. Prince. The question propounded by the gentleman from 

 Calais (Mr, Corthell), is a matter that I have thought more in 

 regard to, within a few years, than any other question relating to 

 orcharding ; and the more I think of it the more doubts I have. 

 I have always set my trees from twenty-five feet to two rods apart. 

 But upon reflection, and upon looking over the country, I have 

 thought I had made a mistake. I have very seriously questioned 

 whether it is not better to set them nearer together. I think that 

 any one in looking at our old orchards, will find the most thrifty 

 of them are where the trees are set near together. The question 

 arises, whether trees near together do not protect each other and 

 become hardier ? In a conversation which I had with one of the 



