78 CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL. 



greatly increased in size, and so much improved in flavor that 

 they would not have been recognized as the same sort. The 

 d'Angouleme when large and well grown, is an excellent 

 fruit. When small, it is perfectly worthless. T. G. Yeomans, 

 of Walworth, N. Y., who has been eminently successful in its 

 cultivation, and obtained thirty-five dollars per barrel for it, 

 has found high culture of vital importance, and has remarked 

 that when the specimen does not weigh over four ounces, it is 

 no better than a raw potato ; and this, we think, has generally 

 been found true. There is no question whatever that this fine 

 pear, as well as many other fruits, has been placed on the re- 

 jected list by some planters for want of good management and 

 proper cultivation. 



Good cultivation and thinning the crop cause all the difference 

 between those superb specimens of the pear which often grace 

 the extended tables and fill the vast halls of our finest fruit 

 exhibitions, and such miserable fruit as we sometimes see 

 borne on the grass-grown, weed-choked, mice-gnawed trees of 

 the slipshod farmer's grounds — planted out with hardly the ex- 

 pectation, but rather with a sort of dim hope that they would 

 grow and take care wholly of themselves. 



One of the best things that a horticultural or pomological 

 society coul^ do, would be to place conspicuously on exhibi- 

 tion a collection of such fruit as might be raised with every 

 advantage resulting from good culture and judicious thinning; 

 and another collection beside it with all the marks of small 

 size and scabbiness which might be expected from utter neg- 

 lect. One collection should be marked, " Fruit raised under 

 THE EYE OF VIGILANCE AND INDUSTRY:" the other labelled, 

 " Fruit grown under Neglect." 



Cultivation is the more important, because it is not com- 

 menced and finished in a day, but needs constant attention for 

 years; and in ordinary practice it receives greater neglect. 

 For, of the thousands of trees which are every year trans- 

 planted in all parts of the country, the assertion may be made 

 with safety, that more are lost from neglected after-culture than 

 from all other causes put together. 



To purchase and set out fine fruit-trees of rare sorts, in a 

 baked and hardened soil, whose entire moisture and fertility 

 are consumed by a crop of weeds and grass, might very aptly 



