Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 799 



places. When the fence-posts are seasoned through, the ends to be 

 pnt in the ground may be covered with coal-tar applied hot to keep 

 the water out. If the tar is placed upon wet or unseasoned posts, it 

 will only confine the moisture, and the wood will decay more rapidly 

 than without it. 



Bookkeeping for Farmers. 



Mr. W. B. Kenwick, Belfast, N. Y,, asks for a good system. 



Mr. J. B. Lyman. — Buy five little pocket memorandum-books, 

 about four inches by six, costing two shillings each. On their outsides 

 write — My Labor Bills ; My Seeds and Plants ; My Stock ; My 

 Fields ; My Sales. Never neglect an entry longer than a week. 

 Then have a larger and more expensive book in which you draw off 

 the sum total of the results of each year, and in which you set down 

 the value of your land, stock and tools. Each January draw up a 

 statement of the balance of the past year as far as your sales are 

 made. Also draw a map of your farm and number the fields, and 

 keep a Dr. and Cr. account with each field. This system is just as 

 good as Brigham's or Perkins'. 



How TO Make Trees Grow. 

 Mr. W. O. Duvall, Brentwood, Long Island. — In the spring of 

 1847 I set out an orchard of 1,400 apple trees ; about 1,000 in regu- 

 lar form and 400 along fences and stone walls. These trees were 

 three years from the seed, planted with my own hands, and budded 

 when two years old, by the same hands. The land on which they 

 were planted had been in corn the year previous, and after the corn 

 was removed in the fall, was plowed beam-deep with a three-horse 

 team. In the spring it was harrowed, cross-plowed, harrowed 

 again, sowed with barley, seeded with clover and timothy, sowed 

 with plaster, and rolled down smooth. With my horse and corn- 

 plow, I then marked my laud in furj-ows twenty-four feet apart 

 each way. I then set out my small trees, the tops all clipped, 

 leaving them only three feet long. Making tlie hill in tlie shape 

 of an inverted saucer, putting but a light covering of dirt on the 

 roots, leaving the crown of eacli tree above ground, I advised 

 them to send their roots down into the deep, mellow earth below. 

 The advice was kindly taken, and they grew to perfection. In the 

 early spring of the six succeeding years they were duly mulched with 

 coarse manure and straw from the bai*n-yard, and if there was not 



