MABYLAITO WEATHER SERVICE 343 



veloping an orchard lies in the presence already of an extensive root 

 system on the part of the native tree whose stump-sprout is used for 

 the stock into which to graft the foreign scion. A difficulty the 

 growers have to meet is that the early opening of the burrs allows 

 insects, like the wevils, to reach the young nuts, and by laying their 

 eggs in them make them wormy and unsalable. Methods of control 

 are coming into use by which this loss may be diminished. 



Working upon the supposition that soil which has supported a 

 crop of wild deciduous trees will maintain a cultivated crop of trees 

 also, the ridges in the higher parts of the Midland Zone have been 

 planted to apple orchards; the headquarters of the industry being 

 in the region near Hancock, near the western end of Washington 

 County. The conditions here approximate those of the celebrated 

 apple regions of New York, the extremes of the climate not being 

 reached here however. This is a comparatively new form of fruit 

 growing in this section and has not yet reached its full development ; 

 many of the orchards being too young as yet to produce commercial 

 crops. As the production increases it seems quite possible that Mary- 

 land will become known for its apples as favorably as it now is for 

 peaches and strawberries. 



Just beyond Hancock a section of good farming country is to be 

 found in several broad ridges and corresponding valleys which are 

 in some cases too steep for easy tillage. These are often set out in 

 apple orchards, the acreage in this section being very considerable 

 and on the increase. The older orchards are now coming into bear- 

 ing. As in the case of the peach, the preference is for land that 

 has recently been in timber, and one may see in some of the orchards 

 the waste from the lumbering still lying where it was left at the 

 time of cutting. Some of the hillsides afford pasturage to the An- 

 gora goat, or to sheep, both of which especially goats act as fore- 

 runners to the orchard through their ability as clean feeders. The 

 goats secure the necessary pasturage from the sprouts and under- 

 growth, killing the undesired shrubbery about the orchard area ; after 

 wards they are removed, and the trees planted with a certainty that 

 much of the growth of woody shrubs, that often continues for sev- 

 eral seasons under other conditions, will not interfere with the work 

 in hand. This ability of the goats depends upon a proper propor- 



