AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 393 



a compost of leaf-mold and manure mixed ■with It; in planting, care should 

 be taken to cut off all bruised or broken roots ; in filling, the soil should 

 be finely pulverized and worked in among the roots, and the tree gently 

 shaken up, so that the soil may reach every root. A tree should never be 

 moved backward and forward, as every pull you give it draws the roots out 

 of their place, and causes them to become doubled up, thus defeating the very 

 object you had in view when you spread the roots; great care should be 

 taken in treading in the soil, for if not properly filled in, the roots are 

 very apt to be broken off. Avoid deep planting ; more trees are lost every 

 year from this cause than from any other. No tree should be planted more 

 than a couple of inches deeper than it was before. Mulching trees after 

 transplanting is a very useful practice ; in winter it helps to exclude frost, 

 and in summer prevents evaporation of moisture, and prevents the roots 

 from suffering from drouth. In pruning the heads of trees before trans- 

 planting, much will depend Upon the size of the tree ; large trees require 

 more pruning than small ones. It needs but little judgment to enable the 

 planter to ascertain how much of the top it is necessary to prune in order 

 that the loss may be equalized between the branches and the roots. The 

 poor success attending the trarisplanting of the large trees in the Central 

 Park of this city, may be attributed to the fact of their not having been 

 pruned ; if one-third of their tops had been taken off, the result would 

 have been different." 



Mr. Carpenter is opposed to fall pruning. He said: I have practiced a 

 good deal of pruning of apple trees in summer, and have been much the 

 most successful. In planting trees (apple or pear), I dig two feet deep and 

 six feet wide, and fill the hole with good soil, and set the tree nearly level 

 with the surface, and never use manure. I make the earth very fine, and 

 am careful in setting them. In budding pears upon quince, set them on 

 very short stalks. A dwarf pear set upon a quince stalk a foot high is 

 almost worthless. 



Prof. Mapes. — I dig pear tree holes four feet deep and four feet wide, 

 and I bore a post auger hole in the bottom of the hole. I don't put back 

 the subsoil into the hole, but fill it with surface soil, and never use any 

 putrescent manure. Out of three thousand dwa.f pears set upon my place 

 I have never lost one; and I always plant the tree low enough to cover the 

 joining of the pear and quince, so that the pear makes roots. I set my 

 trees six to eight feet apart in the rows, and the rows twenty feet apart. I 

 never let my trees grow over six feet high, and always raise crops between 

 the rows, plowing very deep. My trees are always healthy, and my 

 Dutchess d'Angouleme trees average 200 pears to a tree, all large. I use 

 about a pint of soluble phosphate to a tree, once a year. Burnt bones, 

 without sulphuric acid, is almost valueless, as a tree manure. Bones with 

 the gelatine in them, ground, is not a good manure for pear trees. I mulch 

 with salt hay in summer, and take it off in winter. A pear tree needs a 

 great deal of moisture, and that is found by mulching. But the mulch 

 must be taken off in the fall, to check growth, and prevent winter blight. 



