206 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



take off the surface soil of the ground, from five to eight inches deep, and 

 jDile it up for a compost. The ground should then be dug over, from three 

 and a half to five feet deep, with pickaxe and crowbar, and pulverized, and 

 the small stone, if granite, mica slate, limestone, hornblende or talc, may- 

 be left in the soil ; they do no harm, and they are more or less decomposing 

 every year, and furnishing potash, lime, alumen, soda and manganese for the 

 growth of the trees; but the better course would be to collect them all and ^ 

 build a fire in a pit and pitch in the stones, heat them red hot, then throw ^ 

 them into a vat of cold water; they will then all dissolve into a clay and 

 earthy substance, which will form an excellent manure or soil to be spread 

 and mixed with the earth dug up. If the land is springy or wet, a deep 

 drain should be dug on the upper side of the fruit field, so as to cut off the 

 water from the springs and prevent it running and freezing among the 

 roots of the fruit trees. Grape vines, when grown in the field on stakes or 

 posts, may be set out at the rate of four feet apart each way; this will- 

 give 2,t22 plants to the acre. When grown on trellis, they should be set 

 out at the rate of six feet by eight feet; this will give 907 vines to tho 

 acre. The rows had better run up and down the descent of the land. 

 Apple trees should be set out as wide apart as forty to fifty feet each 

 way. Plum trees may be set out sixteen feet apart; quince bushes, ten feet,<: 

 apart; peach trees, sixteen to twenty feet apart; gooseberry trees, six to- 

 ten feet apart. Strawberries should be set out in drills or hills, so wide 

 apart that they may be easily cultivated with a hoe, but not so thick that ' 

 the vines and creepers shall interfere with each other. Along with the 

 earth, and mostly in the bottom of the soil dug up, should be mixed com-, 

 posts of bone dust, charcoal, swamp muck, leaves of trees, barn-yard . 

 manure, rotten wood, chip dung, urine, straw, leached ashes, plaster, lime, 

 common salt, tan bark, rotten hair, skins, dressing of leather; indeed, straw 

 and each and everything that goes to make up the ingredients from which 

 the fruit trees and the fruit itself are composed. The sulphate of iron is an 

 ingredient that will be found very valuable in its applications to the growth 

 of fruit. This is the common copperas of the market. Sawdust, from the 

 saw mills, is an excellent article to mix with the soil. So is the plastering 

 of old houses, when torn dowQ. So are soot, clay, soapsuds from the laun- 

 dry, the fluids from the hogpen, and the soils from underneath stables 

 where cattle are fed and sheltered — indeed, whatever makes a rich soil for 

 the growth of trees and fruit, is the right composition to put into the 

 ground for fruit culture. Trees cannot grow, or large crops of fruit be 

 gathered in an orchard of any kind, without the trees are fed, any more 

 than fat beef and tallow can be found in an ox without he is fed to produce 

 them. The old idea of finding the barren fig tree in the vineyard, and 

 then digging about it and dunging it to make it grow fruit, applies exactly 

 to modern as well as ancient times. When the young trees are ready to 

 to be set out, a trench not less than four feet wide and three and a half feet 

 deep should be opened through the fruit grounds, where the rows for the trees 

 are intended to be set; into these trenches should be placed the compost 

 and soil taken from the surface of the ground, together with the composts 

 from the barn-yard. And, if the weather is rainy, this soil does not need to 

 be moistened; if it is not, it should be made moist by sprinkling water 



